


Done With My Dying

by stonelions



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition, The Last of Us
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Canon-Typical Violence, Crossover, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mild Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-31
Updated: 2016-10-25
Packaged: 2018-08-12 00:51:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 34,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7913992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stonelions/pseuds/stonelions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seven years after the Cordyceps Brain Infection has decimated civilization, Dorian wanders alone in the southern rangelands of Alberta, where he crosses paths with another survivor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> & disclaimers:  
> -The TLOU setting really only works when you don’t think too hard about it. I've spent a few weeks thinking way too hard about it, so I’m pleading for some suspension of disbelief, roughly the same amount required by the game itself.  
> -On that note, please forgive a little bit of video game logic here and there.  
> -I’ve lifted these characters right of out DA and shoved them into this setting, so they are all human and have no magic. Well, maybe they have a little magic—they’re still alive.  
> -There is quite a bit of canon typical violence.  
> -The dog doesn’t die.

Weeds tuft the cracks down the center of the rural highway, blacktop fragmented into ruined archipelagos. Heavy emptiness stretches on all sides.

“Let’s go south, Dorian. They could use someone like you.” He sucks at his teeth, spits. A bad idea is a bad idea.

Months ago, he traveled three hundred miles down the coast supply line by truck, every building stripped bare. No stragglers, a few hunters. One Firefly encampment devoid of life. In that town, generators hummed in the distance, portents of ill will. In another, the croak of clickers echoed in an underground lot. Staying alive was a matter of skirting the main roads, eyes on the upper floors to catch any gleam off a sniper’s muzzle, ears tuned to street level for scuffles or cries.

They came south hoping to find... Hoping to find hope, he supposes. All they found was two abandoned zones, plus a handful of functional ones pointing guns at desperate people who limped to the intakes. Makeshift barricades crumbling around small towns where inhabitants had long since left or died. Moved on, in one way or another.

That was all anyone did, these days.

Outside of Syracuse, hunters ambushed the convoy. Those among their group who weren’t killed were scattered. By some miracle, Dorian escaped, as did his partner, and from there they fled west on foot with some success for a long while.

He lost Felix in North Dakota. A group of newly infected split them up, and when Dorian stopped running he waited for Felix in an old gas station on the edge of town, picked clean as whale bones strewn over the tundra. No food to be had, only a single packet of nails in a rusted shut drawer by way of supplies, but there was a storage room with concrete walls and no windows. Safe. Securable. For three days, every morning he climbed to the roof and whistled, again and again, their practiced birdsong designed to help them find one another without drawing attention to a human voice.

Nothing. No more Felix. He’d moved on.

Dorian spent another night holed up to cry his guts out, and then he moved on, too.

From there he followed the Missouri river until he stumbled into a rundown Firefly camp where they looked ready to be rid of him the second he said hello. Someone recognized him from back east, so he was brought indoors and fed, albeit begrudgingly. A couple weeks later one of their supply trucks let him off by the roadside in a dingy little town. They were southbound, and he was done with any notion of carrying on in that direction. Instead, he pursued what turned out to be the Milk River as it wound slowly but surely northwest. He survived a brush with hunters outside of Havre, Montana, and decided to head due north, but not before he managed to scrounge some supplies. Enough to keep him going a little longer.

North. Why not.

The approach to the border always strikes him as surreal. Hell’s ruined gates left standing open. Every port of entry is high-walled, like the zones, built up on both sides when the United States and their Canadian neighbours locked down the movement of people between spheres in hopes of containment.

Too little, too late. Not the biggest problem, anyway. Crops were contaminated, whole food chains disrupted. Countries the world over stocked produce shelves and in doing so accidentally deployed a pathogen capable of annihilating cities overnight.

The fact that anyone is alive at all boggles the mind. The fact that _he_ is still alive when countless others are dead defies all rational explanation. A child of wealthy parents, spoiled heir to a legacy in a world where those sorts of things once mattered, he used to joke that he wouldn’t last a week roughing it—he’d never camped a day in his life.

September looms at the end of summer, and its arrival will mark seven years of surviving the apocalypse. Last he’d heard his parents were alive, but an ocean away. That had been half a decade ago, before telecommunications finally went down. Mass power outages were the global norm, thus transmitting messages across thousands of miles, land or sea, became one more extinct luxury. He hopes they’re alive, somewhere. There’s a chance, with island nations, that any population left might be able to rebuild eventually. If enough of the infection were burned out and there was no longer a method of transmitting it from the mainland...

He wonders about that sort of thing, from time to time.

Nobody guards the border anymore. Not even scavengers hoping to streamline their murder and thievery. He steps through the gates of hell unchallenged, from silence into more silence. This is Wild Horse, Alberta. So far, there’s sweet fuck all here.

North, then. Onward. He walks because holding still in this world will kill you every bit as quickly as moving through it.

Rangeland, as far as the eye can see, untended for closing in on a decade. Scrub trees spring from the scratchy fields, golden grasses swell on either side of the crumbling blacktop. Mid-July heat is merciless. He follows creek beds, gulches, old irrigation lines, the barest hint of water, in the hopes of keeping his canteen full. It’s hard going. He’s very thirsty, and there’s little shade. He’s thankful for the sweat-stained ball cap keeping the sun off his face, but his mouth is ash dry and he’s beginning to worry.

The dry means less infection. As far as blights go, the Cordyceps are monstrously hardy, but parched heat doesn’t seem optimal for them. They flourish in moisture, which is perhaps why the human body is such an advantageous host.

As comforting as it is to know he’s unlikely to see many infected, that knowledge doesn’t help him not die of dehydration. Admittedly, it isn’t the death he pictured for himself back when he left the zone.

There were rumors early on, of secret vaccines. Possible salvation. Not the failed government run trials the public heard about before broadcasts stopped, but successful prototypes synthesized in private laboratories for society’s remaining elite. Now, years out from the onset, it’s an obvious lie. If the elite are alive and protected, living on without fear, they’re doing it beyond the purview of every single survivor he’s come across in North America’s wasteland. The story strikes him more as something concocted by a populace so bereft of hope they cannibalize what little remains to them, twist it into bitter rage to fuel their own will to go on.

The wind gusts, stirs road dust into the air, and he flinches, thinks about the mask in his backpack and his impermanent supply of filters. Any living person he encounters might up and kill him for both, but there are no people out here, and no infected, either. There’s hardly even a tree higher than his shin, to be frank.

Felix used to tell him he had a knack for avoiding infected. He often seemed to know where they’d be, and possessed a keenness that allowed him to triangulate just how to throw the Molotov over a wall and burn a group of runners to cinders. Intuition and fire solved a lot of life’s problems these days, but not all of them. Most of his success came down to luck, and that luck proved, time and again, not to extend to those close to him. In fact, it only narrowly applied to him.

Throw a Molotov out here and the whole prairie would erupt in flames. He picks his way through a crumbling fence and begins digging for water near a rare winding stripe of green grass.

Living seven years past the end of the world has been a harsh teacher. He learned first aid, initially. How to cleanse wounds and sew stitches. After that, how to find water and edible plants. From there, his education steadily devolved into something less humanitarian. Vicious techniques to end fights before they could begin. How to fire a gun. How to kill another human being who wanted to kill you and take the clothes off your back. A crash course in monsters, both destroying them, and becoming one.

And of course, there are the actual monsters. Cordyceps are a perfect storm: highly communicable, rapid onset, spread by fruiting bodies or bodily fluids. Incurable, and irreversible. Populations the world over decimated within weeks to leave behind ravaged husks, dangerous not only for their infectious potential but because they actively seek to rend the living limb from limb.

There are no exceptions, but observations have led Dorian to certain conclusions. Bites spell certain death, with proximity to the head being a mitigating factor. By air, there’s slight leeway. It takes a high concentration of spores, inhaled fully into the lungs, for the infection to root. Some people have stronger immune systems than others, or are better adapted to ward off disease through the vagaries of genetics, and he’s known one or two that ought to have succumb and didn’t. That was early on, however. These days, everyone is running on fumes. He’s had his own close calls, times he believed he inhaled in the wrong corridor before getting his mask on. Once he was so certain it was over that he locked himself in a basement to wait, alone, shut up where he’d rot before he could do harm. When day broke, he stirred, yawned, and felt his stomach growl. He waited another twelve hours, to be certain of the outcome.

All clear. Here he stands, exhausted, devastated, but alive. So far, he’s woken each morning to the thin light of an indifferent sun, still himself. Hungry, always hungry, and now alone, but in possession of his faculties and able to put one foot in front of the other.

North, and then maybe west to the mountains. Better to die surrounded by awe-inspiring scenery. That is, if he doesn’t die in the middle of a wheat field on the way there.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick warning for a brief and fleeting mention of cannibalism.

Dawn. He slept the night in the backseat of an abandoned car. Day five of aimless progress through the rangelands, filthy and desperately thirsty. At least the landscape has transformed from flat in all four directions to the odd rolling bluff rising out of the plain. From the side of the road as he stretches in an effort to realign his spine, he thinks he spies a red barn in the distance against a backdrop of green. It could easily be a mirage, but he’ll take his chances. What else is there to do? With a breath, he strides onto a dirt road, leaving the highway behind him.

An hour’s walk reassures him the barn is real, and may even boast orchard trees in the yard of the old collapsing farmhouse beyond it. There must be a river or creek nearby, or abundant groundwater, since the grasses here are flush with life.

Only a bit further, now.

A shot rings out in the field on his left. He throws himself flat to the ground. There’s no sliced air, no bullet whipping past, no nearby impact, and he hasn’t been hit. If the gun is pointed at him, they’ve missed. The last time someone shot at him, his luck faltered, and the scar in his left calf is a gnarled testament to his ability to endure extremely dubious triage practices.

He crawls a little ways on his elbows and burrows deep in a thicket, cautious of disturbing any creatures who might be living there. Not having seen any infected recently doesn’t guarantee they won’t pour forth like a wellspring out of the next boarded up building he passes. Or out of a thicket. Thankfully, he finds the bushes unoccupied.

One more shot fires, echoing across the grasslands. Definitely not aimed at him. Perhaps aimed upward, to warn him off. Someone is alive out here. Cold dread lodges in the space between his neck and skull. With Infected, their interest in ripping you to shreds is purely instinctual. People, otherwise normal seeming ones, might want to keep you alive only to eat you later, possibly one limb at a time. He’s heard stories. Out here, he’s willing to believe that the more gruesome it sounds, the more likely it is to be true.

No more gunfire. He eases upward, still covered by the thick greenery of young trees. The red barn blots the sky in the west, dingy house farther off than he’d thought. A lone figure stands between the two structures, rifle raised at the ready.

Aimed at what, he can’t be sure. There’s nothing obvious in the hunter’s line of sight from this distance.

Eventually, the weapon lowers and the figure moves off behind the barn.

Dorian stays in the thicket for an hour, wrapped in a tattered wool blanket to ward off morning's dewy chill. The countryside is far too wide open to risk wandering when someone with a rifle is within eyeshot. Mind you, lingering in the dirt waiting to be discovered hardly appeals, either. Wisdom suggests he stay put until nightfall, then creep away and continue along the road. Or he could take his chances now, retrace his steps to the highway and carry on north, unassailed. Although...

This person, out here on their own, must have supplies. Water. His lip has split from thirst, and there’s only one gritty mouthful left in the canteen. What he’s been finding is half mud or more, and his insides are not thanking him for it. Not much in the way of food, either. Unless he can make the next town—an unlikely feat, considering he’s thoroughly clueless as to where it might be—and rummage through a few old buildings or raid a hunter’s nest, he’ll be in dire need within the week.

No movement on the farm since the gunshots, save a bit of smoke rising from the barn. Cooking fire?

Survival is a running tally of risks, some calculated, some necessary, others desperate gambles to stave off certain death. If he stands up and marches into an armed stranger’s territory, it falls somewhere in the middle. He’s always been a smooth talker but that’s good for approximately nothing if you’re shot before you can open your mouth.

Reason through it: the gunfire has not drawn any undue attention, from either humans or infected. He’s not seen any infected since he began following the barren highway through the rangelands, nor any other people. All dead, long moved on. This man might be crazy, but he might also be grateful to see another living being capable of rational thought. Or he’s got a basement full of prisoners, and Dorian will be inviting his own demise.

He divests himself of the blanket, rolls it tightly, and puts it back in his bag. Crawling on his elbows he exits the thicket, then rises to creep through the long grass toward the road, aiming a periodic glance over his shoulder to assure himself nobody is following.

He staggers out onto the gravel strip poised to bolt, and stops cold.

Here stands a man, flanked by a dog, and in the man’s hand rests a revolver leveled straight between Dorian’s eyes.

“Don’t,” Dorian says, putting both hands up. His voice is thick with thirst and disuse. “Please.”

Silence, save for a low growl from the vaguely wolfy creature crouched at the man’s side. Freckled snout, heterochromatic eyes. The blue one is eerie, a pinprick in ice. It doesn’t curl its lip, but he recognizes that stare. So much as flinch and he’ll have forty-two teeth embedded in his forearm, or somewhere less bearable.

He consoles himself with the fact that there’s a dog at all, even an evil looking mongrel that might savage him at a moment’s notice. It’s a good sign. Most people don’t bother keeping animals around when they’d go a long way towards filling a stew pot.

“I don’t fancy kicking your dog’s head in,” he says, his voice a dry grate, “so if you’d let him know I mean no harm, I’d appreciate that.” Threats in gentle tones, so as not to aggravate the animal. Animals.

“Buzzard,” the man grunts. The dog looks up at him. “Down.”

It settles into a reluctant sphinx crouch.

“Thank you.” Dorian eases in place.

“Where’d you come from?” the man demands.

He clears his throat, tries to summon moisture to his tongue to ease speaking. “Where does anyone come from, these days?”

The stranger chews at a toothpick wedged in his mouth, one nostril pulled into a half-sneer.

Not the answer he was looking for, then. “East,” Dorian tells him. “I worked the coast supply line for four years.”

The gun lowers by an inch, and the man pushes the brim of his hat up; an old Stetson that’s seen better days. “You a Firefly?”

Never a safe question to navigate. Wiser to deflect. “Are you?”

Gun at the ready, the man reaches his empty hand into the front of his t-shirt and pulls out a chain with a pair of tarnished tags weighting the end. They settle against ratty blue cotton with a clink.

That’s a yes, then. “Only you out here?” Dorian asks.

He hesitates, but eventually nods, lowering the gun a little more.

“Me, too.” Dorian admits. Stupid maybe, not to pretend to be part of a group, but he’s beginning to feel more confident that this fellow won’t shoot him, and if he does shoot him, he trusts he has true aim. A quick, painless death is about all a person can ask for nowadays. “Here,” Dorian begins to squirm, slowly, out of his pack. “A gesture of trust, if you will.”

The toothpick shifts on the man’s lips, from one end of his mouth to the other as he sucks on it. “I don’t think so,” he says, raising the gun again.

Dorian lets out a sigh. “I’m going to take off my pack and toss it between us. My tag is in the inside pocket on the front flap. Okay?”

No objections, so he begins to let the bag slide from his shoulders. He hefts it into the dirt, well out of his own reach, and the impact sends his crowbar clanking free of the loop he stows it in. It’s his only remaining weapon. Felix was carrying their old pistol when they lost one another, though Dorian kept a box of ammunition. To barter, maybe.

Gun still trained loosely in his direction, the stranger leans down, unzips the pack, and digs the shining metal trinket out of the aforementioned pocket. “Dorian Pavus,” he reads aloud. He bounces it a couple of times in his palm; weighing it, weighing his options. As if the way the chain falls along his lifeline will reveal any veiled truths. “You could’ve taken this off a corpse. How do I know it’s yours?”

Well, he’s clever enough to think of it and trusting—or stupid—enough to ask aloud. “I suppose you don’t,” Dorian replies. “There’s no...secret Firefly handshake that I’m aware of, so you can take me at my word or you can assume the worst.”

The man offers a surly stare. He sighs, then stuffs the jangling necklace back into the bag. Apparently satisfied, he holsters his gun. “Cullen Rutherford,” he says. He toes the pack gently upright, closer to Dorian, and steps forward with a hand extended.

Dorian takes it. They shake. “Nice to meet you. And that’s...Buzzard, was it?”

The dog is still in a crouch, though looking less murderous now that the humans have stopped bristling.

“That’s Buzzard,” Cullen says. He gives a quick whistle and the dog stands up, approaches them cautiously. “Be nice,” he says to it. Nose forward, it sniffs Dorian’s hand, then his knee. It must deem him acceptable because it gives a snort, flaps its ears shaking out its ruff, and trots away into the grass. “Haven’t seen another Firefly in...” Cullen shakes his head. “Been a long time.”

Up close, Dorian puts them at roughly the same age. Cullen is pale but sunburned ruddy below the brim of his hat, with lines at the corners of his eyes, spattered freckles, and a dark brown beard. Handsome, in another time and place.

“I don’t think there are many of us left,” Dorian says, picking up his pack and shouldering it. He tentatively collects his crowbar, and slides it into its loop. There aren’t many people left, period. Full stop.

No reply. The dog barks, once. “He’s hungry,” Cullen explains. “You probably are too. C’mon.”

Tentative, side by side a few feet apart, each leery of what the other might do if left at their back, they walk toward the red barn on the other side of the trees.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a quick warning that subsistence hunting does happen in this 'verse, so there is an unfortunate rabbit in this chapter. Sorry!

The barn entrance isn’t through any of the doors, but via a single unassuming plank that can be opened inwards, which Cullen promptly bars once they’ve ducked inside.

A fire burns low at the center of the structure, contained in a pit dug in the dirt. Cullen has rigged two old barbecue grills over it, propped on rocks, and on the higher rack sits a cast iron skillet covered in sizzling meat. Quartered rabbit, by the look of it. The unfortunate target in the rifle sights earlier this morning. Dorian’s stomach snarls under his ribs, practically inverting in anticipation of sharing the spoils. Smoke rises in thin tendrils off the pan, perhaps a touch more than is wanted.

“I hope breakfast isn’t burning because of me.”

There’s a rusted pair of tongs off to the side, which Cullen grabs and uses to turn the meat. Slightly blackened, but otherwise fine. “Bit of char makes it taste better,” he says. He nods toward an upturned milk crate a few feet shy of the fire. “Sit.”

Dorian steps forward and seats himself. Cullen fusses with a can opener, pours green peas into a second pitted skillet and sets it down on the larger, hotter rack.

During the pause, Dorian takes in their surroundings. The red barn is heavily fortified, employing old farming equipment and bales of hay as barricades across the doors and windows, in addition to two-by-fours with copious nails affixing them in place. Natural light filters down from high windows and one open hatch in the ceiling.

“Inaccessible from outside, in case you’re wondering,” Cullen tells him. “Only way up is the hayloft.”

Said hayloft is quite high. Too high to reach easily even boosted from someone’s shoulders, and instead of a solid ladder there’s a rope and wood one dangling over the edge.

“I take it you sleep up there?”

“Most nights.”

Buzzard finishes a sweep of the perimeter and returns to an old couch cushion next to a rusted out tractor, where he turns about thrice and lies down.

They certainly seem to have settled in. “Been here long?”

Next to the fire Cullen crouches and pulls his hat from his head, revealing an unruly scramble of ashy blond curls far paler than his beard and brows. “Eight months, maybe?” He pokes at the meat in the pan, turns it about again. “Not...too good at keeping track, these days.”

Why bother, really, aside from knowing a change of season is around the corner, and nature announces itself readily enough. “Eight months... You’ve been safe all that time?”

A nod in reply. “Not many infected, out here. Too dry. Low population to start with.”

In the early days, a lot of rural people had been told to flee to quarantine zones in the nearest cities. Few made it, or if they did, they arrived to find themselves last in lines so long the government started opening fire on them to preempt further spread of the infection.

“Oh.” Cullen rises, takes a mason jar from a shelf, then dips it into a bucket. It comes up dripping, full of water. He makes his way to Dorian and holds it out.

If he had the moisture left in him to cry, he’d be crying. The smell alone, sweet and clear, is almost enough to wet his mouth. He accepts the jar and takes a long, deep pull. Nearly empties it. “Thank you,” he murmurs belatedly, wiping at his bearded chin with a forearm.

“Help yourself,” Cullen indicates the bucket. “There’s a well on the property. Water’s good.”

Dorian gets up and refills the jar, drains it and fills it a third time. He slows down on the third mug. Too much sloshing in his gut will make him sick. Jar in hand, he returns to his seat by the cook fire, where Cullen is watching the meat sizzle.

“What about hunters?” Dorian asks. “Surely that’s a concern.”

Cullen sniffles twice, swipes at the tip of his sharp nose with the edge of a wrist but falters mid-gesture. He glances at Dorian with something like shame on his face. “Not lately. Last crew that came ‘round couldn’t find a way in. Better for them that way.”

The rifle rests, racked on the wall near the entrance along with a plethora of other tools and weapons, including a glossy recurve bow. “Would’ve picked them off one at a time, would you?”

“I’m not above burning this place to the ground to stop it being taken from me,” Cullen mutters.

There’s no questioning his sincerity. “The captain goes down with the ship.”

Between them, the fire crackles, wood hissing moisture. A slight turn in the corner of Cullen’s mouth, akin to amusement. “If the only choice they leave you is how spitefully you want to go...” He shrugs, as if it’s a given.

“Ah. As spitefully as possible, then.” Which makes sense, all things considered. A person’s got to have flint in their very soul to survive out here, especially alone. Or rather, almost alone—atop his cushion Buzzard gnaws at a mottled sable foreleg, then stretches out with a sigh.

On the far wall there’s an old metal sink with a plastic storage box underneath the drain and a pitcher on the rim. Non-functional taps, he assumes, but a basin has many uses. In another corner there’s a cracked leather chair with a lantern next to it. A reading nook, judging by the small pile of books stacked on the right arm. Clothes hang on a line below the hayloft, mostly socks and underwear, a couple of t-shirts.

It’s...homey. Dry. Smells of old hay and wood smoke. Dust and dog.

Dorian looks back across the fire. “May I... May I stay here, a day or two?”

Thin tension spikes, crackling in tandem with the wood in the fire. Cullen takes the toothpick from his mouth, flicks it into the flames. His eyes harden under his brow. “And what kind of guarantee do I have that you won’t kill me? That you weren’t...sent here, to take stock and report back?”

Suspicions like this would be exhausting, if they weren’t perfectly reasonable. Dorian lifts a hand and shakes his head. “We’re on the same side. Or were, at one point. You haven’t shot me, and I owe you. I’ll have you know I take my debts very seriously.” Never has it been truer that a man is only so good as his word. “You can lock me up in an old stall all night if you must, but I have to ask... What kind of guarantee do I have that I won’t end up like that rabbit?”

A long pause. The air in the room pulls tight. Cullen lifts a hunk of meat out of the skillet and into an old bowl, spoons some of the heated peas next to it. He comes around the fire and thrusts the dish into Dorian’s hands. “I don’t do that sort of shit,”  he answers in a low-voiced growl. Retreating, he picks up a second bowl and doles out his own meal. “And I won’t hold you prisoner. Keep that crowbar to yourself,” he juts his chin at the long, sharp implement lying in the dirt alongside Dorian’s knapsack, “and we won’t have any problems.”

Famous last words, Dorian thinks.

Whatever the future might hold, he has shelter for the night, and the bowl of hot rabbit and mealy peas is the best thing he’s tasted in months.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And yet another unfortunate rabbit mentioned, here...

Their first problem arises a mere day later, when Dorian climbs to the roof without first asking permission.

“Christ!” Cullen shouts at him from the field, another dead rabbit dangling from his hand. He seems to collect himself and yells nothing further, but gestures emphatically for Dorian to climb down.

Upon closer inspection, Dorian realizes the idea was not a good one. Anyone who happened to be watching from miles around would have a clear view of a human figure moving about on the top of a red barn. Drawing attention, from the living or the dead, spells disaster.

“I’m sorry,” Dorian says when Cullen storms inside with a glare on his face fit to curdle milk, if there were any around anymore to suffer the fate. “I didn’t think.”

“You’re damn right you didn’t, keep your fool head down if you’re going up there. Might as well paint a target on your backside. And—And this whole place, while you’re at it!”

“Is that really going to draw any more attention than you firing off that godforsaken rifle?”

Cullen’s jaw gapes slightly, but shuts into a grimace after a beat. He retreats to an empty stall with the rabbit in hand, and moments later Dorian hears the rending of pelt from flesh.

They don’t speak much, the rest of the day.

Dorian returns to the roof before sunset, this time on his belly like a snake, to get a feel for the landscape. As it turns out, there isn’t much to garner that he couldn’t see on foot. Reasonably flat to the south. Fields, mostly, dotted with scrub trees that have sprung up from lack of human intervention. A few crumbling buildings, miniaturized by distance. Hillier to the north, where the terrain boasts what looks like actual forest. It’s all very beautiful. With everything in the full height of summer green, one can almost forget the state of absolute desolation in which mankind finds itself.

As the sun sets, the world transitions from gold, to pink, finally blue. With the light gone, they bed down. Opposite sides of the hayloft, Cullen on a foldout cot and Dorian on a crunchy foam mattress topper that stinks of mothballs. Likely fished out of an attic sometime in the recent past. Chorus frogs sing to them from the pond a ways off. Loud little suckers, their voices intermingling with cricket chirps into a wall of nighttime music. All the sounds of a healthy ecosystem.

“You ever do any fishing?” Dorian asks.

“Now and then,” Cullen grunts. He rolls on his side, facing the wooden slat wall.

End of conversation.

Dorian lies on his back and stares through the skylight into the stars, threads of faraway galaxies spinning in the void. Too bad they never made it out there. What’s left of humanity is doomed to live and die in the dirt. In another life, maybe, in another universe, they’ll escape. Now that the world has ended, where else will the souls go? Out there, he hopes. They aren’t coming back here. Nobody deserves this.

A sigh from Cullen. Shuffling as he rolls onto his back. “I’ve thought about our, um, disagreement, this morning.”

“Oh?”

Another purposeful breath, drawn and exhaled. “One or two gunshots...are hard to pinpoint. If you don’t see the person with the weapon, then... I’ve been hunting here for months without problems. But if anyone were to see somebody up on the roof, they—

“They’d know exactly where we were. I understand. I _am_ sorry.”

“It’s... It’s fine,” he says. “I...have a temper.”

“You? No!”

There’s a funny, snuffled chuckle. Actual laughter. “I know, I know. I’ve...been alone out here too long, I think,” he adds, quieter.

“Well, you’re damn lucky I showed up when I did then, aren’t you?” Dorian learned fast that these days, you either make friends quickly, or you never make them at all. Tomorrow they might both end up dead.

More laughing from Cullen. “Anyways, um. Sorry. For being such a...an asshole about it.”

“Happens to the best of us.”

The frogs sing on.

Below them, Buzzard whines. He can’t climb the rope ladder, of course, and it’s been hauled up for the night anyway.

“Blasted dog,” Cullen mutters. He rises, and begins shuffling around. There’s a creak and scrape of wood against wood, and Dorian realizes he’s hefting a board ramp. It hits the top of one of the stacks of hay below with a thud, creating a steep angle, and then there’s rustling, a whump, and a clatter of paws. Buzzard scales the hay bales, then the ramp, with no trouble, and he arrives wagging his tail. Without further ado, he settles beside the cot while Cullen retracts and stows the ramp.

Even in the dark, Cullen must know Dorian is watching him, because as he sits down on the edge of the cot he says, “He got too big to carry up the ladder.”

Picturing that, it’s Dorian’s turn to laugh. “He certainly did.”

Everyone settles into slow breathing. Frog songs. A cool breeze through the open hayloft window.

“Goodnight then,” Cullen says. There’s sleep padding the words.

“Goodnight.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More mentions of subsistence hunting, here.

Day by day, Dorian finds himself absorbed into the routines of the red barn. Morning hunts, afternoon foraging for greens, garden upkeep, and the laundry. After a week, Cullen consents to take him on a scavenging run, though over the course of eight months he’s already absorbed many of the useful items the surrounding area has to offer. There’s a sturdy house a few miles west with another group of orchard trees. Crabapples, mostly, and cherries, though there will be prune plums come October.

“There are feral chickens around, too,” Cullen tells him while they’re out walking. “I see them sometimes, but they’re tricky. Buzzard killed one once and I damn near lost my mind, but he didn’t know better. We ate it anyway. If you could catch a few alive, though...”

Eggs. It would be good to have eggs, again.

One afternoon the temperature soars so high that even the main floor of the barn is unbearable. They’re both shirtless, sweating over their respective tasks. Finally, Cullen throws down the blade he’s sharpening and exhales a long, pained sigh. “Enough of this.” He takes a ratty towel out of a cupboard and gestures for Dorian to come with him.

Dorian is all too happy to abandon his mending and follow. The fabric of his two t-shirts is worn so paper thin that the new stitches never hold long, anyway.

They cross the pasture, dog trailing behind them, and go up the road about a kilometer to wander into the sparse woods, arriving at last on the shore of a small lake. The beach is rocky but they follow it until they come to a shaded point where the water deepens.

“Watch for leeches,” Cullen warns before stepping unabashedly out of his jeans and briefs and wading in.

“You brought me out here to...skinny dip?”

“I don’t have anything you haven’t seen before,” Cullen says over his shoulder, grinning.

He isn’t wrong. When in Rome, as they used to say. Dorian unbuckles his belt and drops his clothes in a heap, then walks barefoot over the sun-warm stony beach, wades into the water up to his ankles. It’s cool. Fresh against his heated skin. “Are there really leeches?”

“Yep.” Cullen sits down in the shallows and splashes his chest, his face. He turns to see Dorian still hesitating near the shore. “Not too many,” he amends. “They hang out in the reeds, mostly, and the water’s moving a bit today. That breeze...”

Waves are flimsy but present. Two slow thunderstorms have rolled over them in the past week, pouring water back into parched land. Some into the barn, too. They had to wrestle a tarp over the ceiling hatch, to prevent a leak from drenching their bedding.

Well, leeches fall off. As long as they don’t latch anywhere terribly private, Dorian supposes it’s not an unreasonable risk.

He wades out to where Cullen has settled and joins him. They sit, nude and submerged to roughly their belly buttons, side by side a couple feet apart. Birds chirrup in the trees on the bank, wind rustles through stalks of yellow-green grasses and leaves. It’s peaceful. Almost. Buzzard stirs up plants and earth here and there, cracks a stick in his jaws while he noses about on the shore.

“Do this often?” Dorian asks.

Cullen shrugs his freckled shoulders.

He’s nothing if not taciturn, Dorian’s threatening stranger become host. How he’s lasted so long by himself raises question upon question, the whole slew of them unanswered. In his mind’s eye, Dorian conjures the image of winter in this same spot. A half frozen lake, trees a series of bare branches knuckled and raised against a white sky. Cullen in a thick jacket puffing clouds of breath, chipping chunks of ice to carry back to the barn to melt for water.

“So. You plan on staying long?” Cullen asks, breaking the reverie.

“If you’re looking to be rid of me, just say so.”

“No, I... I only wondered.” He brings a damp hand to the curls at the nape of his neck, rubbing the skin there. “Where were you headed, anyways?”

On the nearby shore, a little brown bird hops amidst the grasses, overturning bits of detritus in search of snacks. She regards them with rapid tilts of the head; first this way, then that. Their presence does not keep her from her business.

Dorian glances sideways to find Cullen looking at him with sincere brown eyes. He holds the gaze a few moments, then lets his focus drift. The bird takes flight, disappears into the treetops.

“Nowhere in particular,” he says finally. “West.”

Beside him, Cullen nods. He scoops water in both hands and pours it over his blond head, then pushes the wet curls back. They’ll dry in every which direction no matter how he slicks them. “I’ve heard there’s a few places out that way making a go of it,” he says.

“You have?”

Cullen turns to look at him again, water still dripping down his temple into his beard. The bastard really is handsome, damn him. “You haven’t? But you just said—”

“Not because I had any kind of plan. Do I look like someone with a plan, to you? Wandering the prairie alone with a haircut I gave myself a month ago, barely enough food in my pack to last two weeks.” Lost, sitting waist deep in a lake with a man he hardly knows, wondering if he might like other men, too. A godforsaken mess, is what Dorian is.

“Hey,” Cullen says. His palm, wet with lake water, claps against the skin of Dorian’s back. “It’s alright. This is the plan, for now.” He looks up into the treetops, and Dorian does, too. A latticework of green leaves softened at the edges by blue sky fills his vision. “Things’ll sort themselves out.”

Or they won’t. That’s life. So it goes and all that.

“And I like your haircut,” Cullen adds. It sounds earnest enough, but when Dorian looks at him, there’s a rogue cant in his scarred grin.

So he splashes him with all the force he can muster. “Dick. You’re one to talk!”

Laughing, Cullen splashes back. It stops there, though. They both know they shouldn’t make too much noise. Dorian watches Cullen, waiting to see if the moment is done, and his stomach sinks when a strange, wide-eyed pall comes over his features.

“What?” Dorian asks.

“Uhhh, leech...”

“Oh come on, I’m not about to fall for that.”

“Suit yourself,” Cullen tells him, pointing emphatically at a spot in the lake before rising and dashing for the shore.

Dorian scans the water to see a murky shape snaking towards his toes. “Oh, fuck!” And out he goes, too.

On the shore he gives Cullen a shove, Cullen shoves him in turn, then they break down snickering like a pair of schoolboys as they share their one towel and dress for the walk back to the barn.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick warning that the violence picks up a little bit in this chapter.

Late summer is a smell as much as it is anything else. A lush final overture before a withdrawing of life in the fall, vitality retreating to the core to preserve essential function. The red barn is draughty at the best of times and Dorian can hardly imagine spending nights in the hayloft with icy wind howling between every crack in the wooden walls.

“Didn’t you freeze your balls off last winter, living in here?” he asks as they wash up the dinner bowls one evening.

“Ah.” Cullen finishes drying the spoons, clatters them into their cup. He gestures for Dorian to follow and walks to the stalls, where he opens the furthest one to reveal a neatly dismantled command tent. “Put it up smack in the middle of the barn. Of course, I’ve modified it so it vents smoke.”

“Of course.”

“Does the trick,” he adds. “Might be a bit cramped with both of us but we’ll make it work.”

“Draw a line down the middle, that sort of thing?”

Cullen gives one of his snorted chuckles. “Hopefully it won’t come to that.”

They settle into separate activities for the evening. Cullen sits in his ugly leather chair with a survival guide in his hand, no doubt brushing up on winter foraging or something else highly topical. For his part, Dorian kneels with his back to the fire pit and sets about counting and packaging seeds in preparation for spring planting. They’ve spoken about cobbling together a few raised beds near the trickling stream, ways they might conceivably cover them to keep deer and rabbits out. The two Cullen built in the yard for greens serve well, as does his use of repurposed chain link fencing to protect them, but with two sets of hands it’s worth considering augmentation.

Around twilight, the dog lifts his head and cocks his pointed ears. Cullen sets his book aside and stares at Buzzard, waiting on an indication of what’s got his attention. Could be coyotes in the field, or rats maybe, or any number of other rustling creatures. Dorian thinks he hears a far off peal of thunder, but instead of petering out, the sound builds to a steady whine.

Engines. Car engines. He and Cullen lock eyes, the shatter of realization exploding between them.

“Shit,” Cullen scrambles up the rope ladder, onward to the top of the barn, scoped rifle slung over his shoulder. “Military convoy,” he calls down, eyes trained to the south. “Wait...”

Dorian stares at the wall, picturing the road on the other side of it. A whole series of engines rumble; bikes, larger trucks. Too many. There are too many for a routine military search and grab. It’s hunters. It has to be hunters, roving the outskirts for supplies, and them with full stores, and a garden...

“Cullen, get down here.”

“I’ll take out the drivers, I’ll—

“Get the fuck down here!”

They have to leave. Buzzard stands at the exit, nose jammed under the boards, huffing the air. His hackles are a hyena tuft down his back. It’s possible he’s never heard the rattle of engines before in his life.

“We have to leave,” Dorian says quietly. What sounds like a motorcycle revs down the highway, likely breaking free of the caravan to scout ahead. “Cullen, we have to leave now.” There’s a minuscule chance these people mean no harm, but the odds are stacked against them. Not that there’s much use fleeing on foot, either, if they’re spotted.

Cullen lands on the dirt floor and throws down a canvas pack. He scrambles in his pantry, loading the bag with jerky, canned goods, vacuum sealed rations. “How much can you carry?”

“I—I don’t...”

“Nevermind.” He grabs Dorian’s bag from its hanger and throws it to him. Then, he takes the bow off the wall. “Know how to use this?”

Dorian watches him hold it out, feels as though he’s watching himself watch Cullen, grasps what the question is but cannot answer it. “I... it’s...”

The weapon goes over Cullen’s shoulder. “Fuck it.” He snatches a handgun out of the cabinet and shrugs off the rifle, thrusts both at Dorian. “Let’s go.”

More engine sounds passing the property, looping around the dirt road that leads to the house. Chill fear skates along Dorian’s spine, freezing him. “We’re surrounded...”

There’s a firm touch to the side of his neck, one calloused thumb pressing against his cheek. He finds himself staring into Cullen’s dark eyes. “Hey, hey,” he says. “Stay with me. You with me?”

Nodding, Dorian forces himself to breathe.

“Okay. They’re going to the house first, so if we hurry...” Cullen darts into the pantry and comes out holding a few more items, bodily spins Dorian around to stuff them into his pack. “Anything of yours you need I suggest you grab it.”

Dorian staggers to the fireside and stuffs every seed parcel he can lay hands on into a leather satchel. Irrational perhaps, but they’re light. Very small. They’ll grow a future for whoever stumbles over his corpse, whether they deserve that future or not. Even if they stole his expressly to take what little he had from him.

They slip out the plank door. Cullen has rigged a locking mechanism which drops a heavy bar across the entrance from the inside, which he triggers once they’re clear. Entirely possible to lever a stick between slats and fulcrum away the impediment, but it does make the door extremely irritating to open again, if anyone can even find the spot—it looks no different than the rest of the exterior barn wall.

“Buzzard,” Cullen points the dog toward the distant tree line. “Let’s go. Be quiet.”

The dog is a liability, and the grim set of Cullen’s mouth tells Dorian he’s thinking the same thing. _Please, please be quiet_. Maybe if he projects the thought with enough force it will pass through the dog’s hard skull and hold his bark in his throat.

“Which way?” Dorian whispers. No matter what direction they choose, they won’t have enough cover. Even with the hills rising out of the flatlands, a huge empty stretch stands in their path. Their one hope is the blue of dusk blurring the world around them by the minute.

“The lake,” Cullen hushes. “Keep the barn right behind us.”

Block sightlines. If the cavalcade parks at the house and the lookouts don’t stray far in either direction, they have a chance.

Buzzard sets their pace at a trot. They do not speak, and Cullen hurries Dorian in front of him, correcting their course with firm tugs on his pack if he strays too far left or right.

The tree line is a field’s length out, and they’re a thirty second sprint from crossing the threshold. A single bullet whaps into the earth. Another, closer.

“Go!” Cullen shouts, and they’re running.

Two more shots strike the ground near them. The sound of a motorcycle booming to life echoes across the range, a steady roar progressing towards them.

The gunshots stop, or they’re being drowned in the engine noise. Adrenaline pours into Dorian’s limbs, flares his nostrils, sends him careening forward even with his lungs on fire.

“Keep going!” Cullen shouts behind him, and he does. A glance over his shoulder tells him that Cullen has come to a dead halt, but Dorian obeys him, runs until he reaches the tree line. In the narrow margin of safety at the edge of the wood he skids to a halt in a billow of dust and grass seed. If this is another goodbye, this time he wants to see it happen.

Cullen takes the bow off his shoulder, nocks an arrow.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Foolish; a damned action hero making a last stand. Bullets whack the dirt on either side, fired by the crew off in the distance, but they obviously don’t have anything long range or automatic—if they did, they’d both be dead. The man on the bike can’t steer and shoot at the same time on rough terrain and it’s clear his intention is to run Cullen over. He revs the engine, gears down for more torque.

Steady as living stone, Cullen draws the bowstring back. The biker changes course, but can’t swerve quickly on uneven ground without throwing himself. Even his dodging has a rhythm, a pattern. As the gap between them closes, so does the window for Cullen’s shot.

The arrow flies too fast to track with the eye. It strikes center mass and the bike veers, inertia flinging the rider, who rolls for several violent metres until he stops, limp, face down, one leg visibly broken.

Cullen hurries the bow back over his shoulder and sprints for the forest, startling when he sees Dorian. “I told you to keep going,” he snaps as he dashes past.

“Yes, well,” Dorian breaks into a run after him, “had you died, I would’ve. Nice fucking shot, by the way.”

“Should’ve been wearing a helmet,” Cullen says flatly. “Let’s go.”

No sound of engines in pursuit, no shouting, no footsteps. Only a few birds calling, hesitant. Bats swoop in the night sky, tiny blots of ink against a tapestry of stars. They’ve a head start now, though he doesn’t recognize the path they’re on. It could be the dark rendering it unfamiliar.

“How far to the lake?” he rasps as they trot.

“Uh—ouch, shit,” Cullen falters on a fallen branch, rights himself. “I meant the big lake.” He hisses a breath, working up to elaborating. “There’s a town, few kilometers north.” Another breath. “We’ll hide there, hope they take what they want and go.”

Nothing is ever that simple. They’ve killed one of the crew. “And if they don’t?”

Cullen continues his forward run. The bow gleams where it rests over his shoulder. “Then we’ll see,” he replies.

As the night deepens they slow their pace. The moon is on the wane but still large enough in the sky that visibility proves no problem. Adrenaline, however, takes its toll and they’re both flagging. The dog, it seems, is tireless. Lucky little shit. Eventually they come out of the woods onto a dirt road lined with a handful of cottages.

“Which one?” Dorian asks.

Without replying, Cullen gestures for him to keep following. He picks up a hefty rock and steers them into an overgrown yard, where he toes open the door of a two storey cabin. Lowering to a crouch, he tosses the rock into the center of the house. It bashes and cracks against the floor. Silence presses empty around them.

“Spores?” Dorian takes his flashlight from his pack and shines it inside, sees nothing save grotty kitchen counters and dust.

“Not too likely,” Cullen answers. He waves his hand and Buzzard obeys the signal, disappears inside. “C’mon.”

Upstairs, into a small bedroom. They block the door with a dresser. There’s a window that opens out over a carport, in case they have to take a leap of faith and keep running. The room is largely untouched, and looks like it once belonged to a teenager. It’s shocking to stumble upon places that haven’t been ransacked for every last scrap of usable fabric.

“There really was no one out here, was there,” Dorian mutters.

In the corner, Cullen is stripping off his weapons and pack. He opens the closet and pulls out two blankets, thick with dust. “Don’t get chilled,” he says as he tosses one to Dorian. “You take the bed.” With that, he settles on the floor next to the dog, using an old sweater as a pillow. “And no,” he adds, quietly. “Most people tried to make it to the zones.”

Dorian was fortunate enough to find himself already residing within a quarantine zone when the evacuation orders came down. Fortunate being a relative term, since he was shortly thereafter ousted from his apartment and put through processing along with thousands of other desperate, helpless people. By the time he and Felix made it back home again, most of their things had been looted.

No use dwelling. He sets down his pack within arm’s reach and curls on the bed wrapped in the blanket. Sleep comes, though it is uneasy. His dreams are of cages, ruined limbs, death. The moon outlines the rise and fall of Cullen’s breathing in the center of the floor, and whenever Dorian stirs, that’s where his eyes go. In, and out. In, out. When he begins to cry, thinking of Felix sometime in the early morning, Buzzard jumps up beside him. He sleeps again, then.


	7. Chapter 7

At dawn, the room is empty. There’s a note on the door that says _stay put_ and he resents not being woken so they could discuss whatever it is Cullen is up to. If they’re to survive this they have to talk to one another. He resettles himself half inside the closet and dozes, ears tuned to the lower floor of the house.

Soon, there’s a creak. Pattering footfalls of a four-legged creature with clawed toes. Buzzard slides his snout through the door a moment later, enters wagging his tail. Cullen follows close behind, definitely looking less enthusiastic.

Dorian sloughs the blanket and turns to face the pair. “Where were you?”

Cullen shrugs. “Couldn’t sleep. Thought I’d have a look around.”

“And?”

“We’ve no company, if that’s what you mean.”

“That’s all well and good, but this lone wolf nonsense ends here,” Dorian insists, one finger pointed. “If you’re leaving, you wake me.”

Nodding, Cullen shoulders out of his pack and sets it down on the floor. He unzips a front pocket, begins digging about in it. “So, what you’re saying is...wake you up before I go-go?” He’s working hard not to laugh, the twitch at the corner of his lip betraying him.

Dorian puffs air through both nostrils. “ _Now_ he’s a comedian,” he mutters. At least he can be certain they're roughly the same age, if Cullen knows his eighties pop hits. A handful of shiny packets whap suddenly against his chest and he fumbles to catch them, missing all but two.

“Found some old protein bars.” Cullen tosses one more at him. “Expired, but they’re fine.”

Par for the apocalyptic course, at this stage. Thank god for all those preservatives so many people were up in arms about before civilization collapsed out from under them. The wrapper crinkles as he tears it open and stuffs the vile thing in his mouth. “Eugch,” he says, chewing.

“Yeah,” Cullen agrees. “Doubt they tasted any better before the expiry date.” He moves to perch on the desk by the window, eyes fixed on the road that led them into town.

Dorian finishes the bar and opens a second one, pausing only for a mouthful of water. They’re going to sit like bricks in his stomach, he can already tell, but he’s grateful for anything to cut the acid. “So,” he says, wiping his beard to chase stray crumbs, “now what?”

Birds sing in the copse of trees outside, a late dawn chorus. If the window were open, he imagines he could hear the lake lapping against the shoreline.

“Place next door is a bit easier to secure,” Cullen says.

Setting up the neighbouring cabin involves rearranging old furniture and breaking into the attic to gain access to a good viewpoint. In the process, Dorian manages to drop a sofa on the side of his calf, and develops a nasty, aching goose egg for his troubles. Afterward, they hunker down for a long day of waiting. They trade off on sentry duty, rifle laid out ready next to the window, but it’s fruitless vigilance. No one materializes from the woods. No Infected stagger out of any of the cabins. Around them, wind rustles leaves, green and glinting. At dusk, Cullen concludes they’re safe to light an old barbecue, which they use to boil up some macaroni from a still shrink-wrapped bulk pack they excavate from the depths of the kitchen cupboards.

Dorian spent the heat of the day sweltering in the attic and finds himself chilled after the sun sets. They lugged the blankets from next door with them, so he wraps himself in the same one now, all the while wishing they could have a fire. Unfortunately, the risk outweighs the reward. At least he has a full stomach.

For a while Cullen sits watch in the attic perch, but he descends before too late. “They’re not going to chance coming at night, not knowing where we are,” he explains as he beds down, next to the dog.

They lie awake on a shared king sized mattress, dragged onto the floor and away from the windows.

“Cullen?”

“Mm.”

Silence. A moth beats its wings against the window glass.

“What are we going to do when they come?”

Behind him, Cullen turns over, jostling them. “Fight,” he says matter of factly, as if that’s all the strategy they need. A singular decision, like flipping a switch.

If only it were that easy. “What if we get split up?”

He swears he can feel the breath of Cullen’s answering long sigh. “There’s...an old ski hill a couple klicks south, down the main highway. Head there and keep a low profile. Give it a day, then...move on.”

Well, that’s bullshit. “You’re not serious. One day?”

A hand presses against his shoulder. “Dorian, if... If I’m not there in twenty-four hours,” Cullen’s fingers twitch, and he inhales, “I’m dead.”

“You don’t know that. You might’ve gotten pinned down. Or—Or injured.”

“Then I’m as good as dead, anyway,” Cullen mumbles.

Tension stiffens Dorian’s limbs, every muscle in his back. “Cullen, for fuck’s sake, I’m not—

“Alright, alright.” He withdraws his touch in surrender. “Wait two days, then. And if I lose you, I’ll wait three. Okay?”

He doesn’t like it. It doesn’t sit right. And, it occurs to him, there’s absolutely no reason he has to obey these orders should it come to that. “Fine,” he agrees. They drop the subject.

Dorian drifts in and out of sleep, dreams himself standing in the ration line with Felix. It’s closed, and they’re hungry. They hold each other’s hands, to ward off the cold.

In the night, in the present moment, warmth presses into his back. He assumes it’s the dog, reaches behind him to pat a furred flank, and his palm lands on denim over a hard hip bone.

“Ah...” He pulls his hand away, but not fast enough. Not before lingering on the contour, the shape under his fingers. “Sorry.”

They’re back to back, he realizes now. Or were: Cullen shuffles until they’re no longer touching, and Dorian swallows in time with the sinking of his heart. “I thought you were the dog,” he explains feebly. The truth might as well be a lie, for all the good it does. More shuffling behind him, and no answer. He closes his eyes against the sting. Another in a history of quiet rejections, which smart even here at the end of the world.

Warmth settles into him a second time, and he grunts in surprise. In the blue darkness an arm curls over his waist.

“Is this okay?” Cullen whispers, hot breath against his nape. The tip of his nose touches the bone at the base of Dorian’s neck. He stinks of canvas and dust, of body odor and greasy hair. Dorian doesn’t smell any better, and it stopped bothering him a few months after everything went to shit. If you stank of sweat and blood, old leather and dirty laundry, it meant you were alive.

His leg hurts, where he bashed it with the stupid sofa. Nothing is okay, and he’s fine.

“Dorian?”

In the dark, he levers onto his back, careful not to disentangle them. He turns once more, to press his face past the unbuttoned collar of Cullen’s shirt, against the crook of his throat. He stinks, and he’s alive, and warm, and he pulls Dorian in tight and scrapes fingers through his hair. Filthy as they both are, the touch is absolution. Permission. Dorian fumbles with each shirt button until he can snake his arm under the loose cotton, around Cullen’s narrow body. Warmth billows between them and he nestles in to keep it there, moving closer until he understands that he’s begun to cry.

He knows this because Cullen is hushing him, very softly.

“Shh, shh, It’s okay,” he says. “It’s okay...”

Nothing is okay. Everything is fine. Tomorrow, they’ll keep watch again.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another warning for violence in this chapter, and also I will repeat that the dog doesn't die!

When he wakes, it’s to Cullen shaking his arm. “We’ve gotta move.”

Only dim light, outside. The hour before sunrise or thereabouts. Buzzard has both ears cocked toward the window.

“Are they here?”

“Five of them,” Cullen whispers. “At least one with a shotgun. They’re checking all the houses.”

Best to get out of town. Back to the woods. They shoulder their gear and slip through the window onto the roof, lower themselves slowly to the back patio. Dorian startles when Buzzard barks twice and begins whining from the roof. He paces back and forth, refusing to jump even when Cullen beckons, ready to catch him.

“Find that fucking dog!” someone shouts in the street.

“Cullen...” They can’t afford to be seen.

“It’s too high,” Cullen snaps. As if in agreement, the dog whines louder. “Buzzard, come on!”

The dog only wags his tail in apology and stalks the roofline once more before disappearing back through the bedroom window. Cullen begins to shove the wooden deck table toward the side of the house, but there’s a second shout, closer this time. Movement on the front steps. Dorian grabs hold of Cullen’s backpack and gives an immense yank, hauling him down the stairs and into the scrub trees that fill the yard. Footing unbalanced by Cullen’s stunned reluctance, he tows him onto another road then further up an embankment.

“They’re going to kill him,” Cullen mutters.

“Stop.” Dorian drags him stumbling toward the nearest cabin.

“They’re going to kill my dog…”

“Stop it!” Dorian turns the handle on the door but it’s locked. “Around back, come on.”

A bullet slices clean through the air next to his ear, splintering the wood in front of them and standing his hair on end. They sprint around the house only to find little potential cover. Scrambling, they force through a thin line of trees and into another yard that presents few options. If they can crawl under the deck maybe—

“Here, here, here!” Cullen snatches at Dorian’s backpack and drags him through the open door of an old RV, which he slams shut and locks behind them.

Footsteps crunch on the road. Terrified barking echoes in the morning light, followed by a yelp. Cullen’s eyes are red with the threat of tears.

“You want your doggy back?” The taunting voice is already close. “Better come out and get him.”

Dorian peers through a slat in the blinds of the rear RV window, to assess if they’re being surrounded. To see if Buzzard is still alive. He has a clear view of the road, and there’s no sign of the dog, but there are three men tentatively moving toward the yard where the RV is parked.

“In there,” someone says, but he points to the nearby cabin.

“They think we’re in the house,” he whispers to Cullen, who sat down with his back to the wall and his head on his knees.

Trapped. Hidden for now, but Dorian fully expects to be greeted by the whuff and shatter of a molotov any second. They don’t have the supplies to contend with burns and besides that, they’re running out of places to run to.

Another cry from the dog and Cullen grits his teeth and grinds fingers into both temples. With a jerk, he lifts his head. He shrugs free of his pack and weapons, picks up the rifle and snatches a box of ammunition. “Run,” he says. “Climb out the front window and run. Before they realize we’re not in there.”

He means it. Dorian knows he does. “And what about you?”

“If I start shooting, they’ll focus on me. It’ll give you time.”

“Cullen—

“Get out of here, Dorian!” he rasps. “Go, now!”

Fuck.

He’ll think on the run. He scrambles to the front of the RV and slithers through the driver’s side window, lowering himself to the dirt and dropping immediately behind the neighbouring retaining wall. The group of hunters bashes their way inside the house; he can hear them talking and crashing furniture around, so he stays low, moves from yard to yard, toward the general store. A first shot rings out, then a second. Answering rounds pinging against metal siding. Shit. Maybe he can find something flammable, shatter some glass, anything, anything to get their attention and give Cullen a chance. He’s halfway up the general store stairs when he glances at the faded red cabin across the way.

There’s a glinting Jeep with flawless tires pulled up next to it. Unattended. They must’ve parked there and searched the lakeside lodge first. The keys will be in someone’s pocket and he has no illusions about hotwiring anything built after the turn of the century, but...there might be a hidden spare.

Barring that, he’ll blow the fucking thing up. That ought to get their attention.

With one deep breath to even out his rushed ones, he dashes down the stairs and across the road, skids to a halt in a crouch, and does a full circle to check each wheel well. Nothing. He hits the ground on his back to grab hold of the bumper. A rough scrape against the gravel as he wrestles himself below the car and begins patting parts of the undercarriage. There’s nothing obvious, no blatant magnetic boxes.

“Fuck!” He thuds the base of his palm against the nearest stretch of metal, dirt and dust falling into his mouth and eyes. Coughing, he blinks it away, grips a sturdy looking bit of piping to haul himself clear.

Pain bites into his thumb. He whips it back to see torn flesh, bright red. It’s not bad but it hurts, and hand wounds bleed and bleed. He lets his head hit the dirt and simply stares up at the workings of the car for a moment, air hissing through his teeth, catches himself thinking he might as well lie there and wait to die. Except...

There’s an odd misshapen patch near the front left wheel. He brushes fingers over it. Rough, but slightly rubbery. Duct tape? Aged beyond recognition, but holding. With the blunt edge of a nail he digs at it, pulls it loose. A key drops straight onto his forehead with a clunk and clatters off to the side. There’s a moment of disbelief. “Holy shit.” No time for awe. He sweeps it into his palm and slithers from beneath the vehicle, opens the door, slots it in the ignition, and slams the clutch in.

“Please, please, please...”

The engine shudders to life. Shouts sound down the street, and one of the hunters runs into the road, pointing a gun at the windshield. A single cracking shot fires from the RV. Blood sprays from the man’s midriff and he staggers a few steps, drops face-forward in the dirt. Dorian throws the car in gear and slams on the gas, rips along the road staying low behind the wheel, gaining speed until he reaches the cabin. Guns are raised at him but nobody fires, so he swerves toward the men on the lawn, sends them racing to avoid him. Nearby, another one of them howls in pain and lets go of a dog, which has definitely just bitten him.

Dorian slams on the brakes and spins the wheel hard right, nearly turns one-eighty, then flings open the passenger side door. “Buzzard!”

The animal is terrified, bewildered ears pressed back against his skull, but he runs toward Dorian’s shout. In a streak of fur he leaps into the car, favoring a front leg, and Dorian slams the door shut behind him. He steps on the gas, retracing his approach past the property and swings right at the end of the block to speed along the lane. He has to get to Cullen.

Skidding to a halt in the back driveway, he finds an angle that puts the metal body of the car between him and hopefully any shots fired, then leans on the horn and prays. A figure with a baseball bat breaks into a run toward him across the yard and he scrambles to reach his pistol, but another rifle blast from the RV sends the man to the ground, clutching at his thigh. There’s a lot of loud yelling. He can’t catch anything specific—his blood is pounding too hard in his ears.

A second ticks past, and a bullet clunks near the Jeep, but not into it. These fuckers want their car back in one piece. It’s a colossal advantage, and one he hadn’t banked on. A few seconds more and he sees Cullen slithering out the RV window the same way he did. Once on his feet, he gestures down the road and begins running. Dorian drives on to meet him.

Cullen vaults the hood of the car before it fully stops, ungraceful but efficient, and throws himself through the passenger door. The second he’s inside, Dorian stomps on the gas. The last few buildings in town blur past and the road widens out as they soar along the lakeside on the old highway, flanked by cattails and a cloudless sky.

For several minutes, they’re silent. Buzzard busies himself licking Cullen’s face, and Cullen cries all over the dog’s head. The adrenaline hasn’t run its course yet, but it’s starting to. Dorian can feel the build of a full body tremor. His feet are leaden heavy on the footrest and accelerator and there are pins and needles alight across the expanse of his shoulders. In his rearview, the hills and lake dwindle by the second.

He focuses on his breath. Tries to keep his vision clear and his mind on the unfolding stretch of road ahead of them.

In the passenger seat, Cullen starts to straighten out. He breathes quietly, obviously counting inhalations and exhalations. “Now that,” he finally says, “is what I’d call...” he clears his throat, takes a swipe at his damp eyes. “An escalation.”

Dorian balks. “An escalation? An _escalation?_ I think we were already at peak escalation, you fucking doughnut,” he damn near shouts.

With that, Cullen starts to laugh. He starts to laugh and Dorian starts to laugh, and soon enough Cullen is folded over wiping more tears from his eyes and they’re both laughing like the sunrise coming up behind them is the funniest thing they’ve ever seen.

Rubbing at his face, smiling big and foolish, Dorian eventually sighs. “So,” he says, “where to?”

Under them, the engine rumbles along, well-oiled reassurance. The doors vibrate a bit at high speed, which is to be expected. They don’t have a full tank of gas but it’s sitting at a solid three quarters.

“Keep going about half an hour,” Cullen says. “Maybe we can scrounge up some supplies in the city.”

“The city?”

Cullen, who still has a hand on Buzzard’s ruff, scratching idly, nods. “Medicine Hat. There was no zone there, but...”

It might be home base for any number of foul individuals. Not to mention there could still easily be nests of infected in the city centre. However, there might also be supplies.

Road silence descends again.

They don’t talk about the fact that they’ll be followed. Possibly by the whole convoy this time, since they’ll be wanting the Jeep back. They’ve got a couple hours head start, but gasoline, like so many necessities in this hellish post-human world, is a finite resource. Nothing for it. Nowhere to go but forward.

Dorian puts a hand on Cullen’s shoulder. “You sleep a while, if you can.”

Cullen is already dozing, and at the suggestion he props his pack against the window to lean on, and closes his eyes.

Not far now.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yet another warning for violence, similar to the previous chapter.

Outside the city limits, Dorian nudges Cullen’s arm. “Hey.”

Cullen blinks at him, sits up, takes a few uneven breaths and pushes his hair off his forehead.

They roll to a halt at the exit that would lead them into town, the shoulder still littered with rotted wrecks and sun bleached abandoned suitcases. “Think we should chance it?”

There’s a moment where it looks like Cullen might refuse, but he nods instead. “Take this exit but swing a left at the underpass,” he indicates a juncture ahead. “There’s an old grocery store. Probably cleaned out, but...might as well have a look.”

If they can scrounge so much as a box of fruit leathers, they’ll be doing better than they are now.

All seems calm as they pull under the highway and into the lot shared by several large stores. Dorian makes a point of parking flawlessly in the faded white lines of a space, and Cullen snorts and shakes his head as he climbs out of the car. He lets Buzzard hop down, and the dog favors his foreleg slightly but only on the first couple steps. Not broken, thank fucking god.

“You’re alright, buddy,” Cullen says as he ruffles the animal’s ears. “Good boy.”

The storefront is boarded shut, save where someone has uncovered a single empty window frame, long since cleared of glass. They peer inside, weighing options.

“Masks out?” Dorian suggests.

Cullen clicks his flashlight on and shines it inside, illuminating the evenly spaced rows of checkouts and the aisles beyond. “I think we’re okay.” He examines the rounds in the chamber of his revolver. “Just be ready. And you,” he says to the dog, “be quiet.”

The place is desert barren. They comb aisles one at a time in silence, revealing empty shelf upon empty shelf. Dorian spots a single can of chickpeas that rolled behind a bunch of shattered jars of spoiled pickles. He slips the prize into his pack. In desperation, Cullen climbs up to scan the tops of the high shelving units to see if anything has been overlooked. “Hm.” He disappears from sight.

“Don’t fall,” Dorian hushes at him.

“I will if I feel like it,” he hushes back.

“Ass...”

A minute later, he’s lowering himself down with something in his hand. “Still sealed,” he says with a grin, holding it out to Dorian. Peanut butter. He’s found a twin pack of peanut butter.

“No fucking way.”

“Somebody probably stashed it up there when they couldn’t carry any more.”

Judging by the thick layer of dust coating the brightly coloured lids, they aren’t likely to be coming back for it. “Well, _we_ can carry it.”

After circling the rest of the store, adding a packet of tissues, some mouthwash, and a serviceable box of matches to their spoils, they come to a pair of swinging doors leading into the back. A slight air current moves them on their hinges and they bump against the heavy wooden pallet someone used to bar them. Ghosts exhaling, looking to slip through the cracks.

“Maybe the good stuff’s in the back?” Cullen jokes in a whisper, reaching to clear the door.

“Wait.”

Cullen freezes. His expression drains of all light and humor and he’s got one ear cocked and his hand on his gun. He mouths, _Do you hear something?_

Feels something, is more apt. After seven years, he’s learned to trust these errant jolts of unease. He holds up a finger, then crouches down on the floor and peers under the doors, not sure what he expects. It’s dim back there, but a few high windows outline shelving, the rear of a truck still backed into the warehouse bay. Against the far wall next to a desk stands a clicker, stationary and twitching. There’s never only one.

“Clickers,” he whispers to Cullen.

Cullen’s lip curls in a silent snarl. _Let’s go_ , he mouths, thumbing back toward the main doors.

But there’s a low noise humming through the walls of the building. An engine. Dorian sucks a breath and looks at Cullen, whose face is blind fury for being taken off guard. For them to catch up so quickly... They must’ve had plenty of gas to burn.

Cullen tongues his scar and takes Dorian’s hand. They move as quietly as they can toward the storefront. “They’ll probably head downtown,” he breathes. “They’ll probably think we—

Tires crunch on pavement, too close. The rumble of the engine cuts and there’s a soft thunk of feet hitting asphalt.

They hustle behind one of the checkout stations and Cullen trains an eye on the parking lot through the unboarded window. He holds up three fingers. Dorian wonders if they all have guns.

“Here, we found it. Let’s just take the Jeep and get the fuck outta dodge,” somebody grumbles in a hurry. “That one sonofabitch can shoot, and they’ve got to be close.”

“No, look, the boss says we bring these fuckers back,” another voice cuts in. “That mongrel, too.”

A pause.

“Think they’re doing some shopping?”

The footsteps begin a forward march toward the doors, and Cullen shoves Dorian in the direction of the produce department. “Stay down. Head for the back.”

Three men enter the building and walk toward the deli at the other end of the store, their boots squeaking on trashed linoleum. One of them kicks an empty can, sending it rattling along the floor. The instant the crew moves beyond the aisles where they might glance over and see the swinging doors, Cullen leaps up and takes hold of the pallet. “Help me,” he whispers, and Dorian grips the other side so they can set it down without a sound.

They creep away, turn the corner back to the produce department where they won’t be exposed in one long corridor like handy targets lining a shooting range should someone spot them.

The hunters are being haphazard for a crew hell-bent on searching out two supposedly dangerous stragglers. They’re talking in near normal voices, as if they don’t expect to find anything. Except for one:

“I swear to god, this isn’t gonna end well.” The same voice that suggested they reclaim the Jeep and cut their losses. “We’re wasting our gas on this horseshit. We should forget it, go back over the border. Hit some of those big strip malls.”

“Come _on_ , man. See the shelves? Looks exactly like that down there.”

“Hey, you don’t know.”

“Or maybe I do know, asshole, because I’ve been there and seen it.”

Gurgling shrieks resonate inside the warehouse room.

“Oh, fuck!”

Infected pour through the swinging doors in a din of inhuman hisses and screeching. At least six clickers. Their howls echo through the space, mingled with yells as the men flee.

A shotgun fires, twice, then someone is screaming and screaming. Dorian covers his ears against the sound but Cullen grabs hold of his arm, begins towing him and the dog to the front of the building.

“Motherfucker!” someone cries out before several more gunshots boom. “No!”

They scramble in a low crouch from empty display table to empty display table, finally to a checkout and then through the window panel, where Cullen grabs hold of the torn down board and bangs it back in place.

Now there are two Jeeps. Dorian rushes to hoist himself into the back of the second one, seizing two full gas cans. “There are more,” he says, holding them out, and Cullen trots over to collect them, and the second pair. In the front he finds a cloth sack full of jerky and protein bars, tosses that into their Jeep as well. Cullen rummages through the back compartments, surfaces with a spare gun and a few boxes of ammunition.

The wooden plank covering the store window slams to the ground, and out careens one of the men. He startles at the sight of them, a mere millisecond’s hesitation before he charges at Cullen with a drawn tactical knife. Their bodies crash into the side of the Jeep as Dorian yanks his crowbar up from its sling, arcs it down with a crack on the sunburned skin at the base of the hunter’s skull. The man goes rubbery, a sack of bones dropped on the asphalt, knife clattering away to the side. Panting, Cullen stoops to grab the blade, then nods toward the car and staggers around to the passenger side.

They load in. Dorian starts the engine just as a familiar horror begins wending its way free of the grocery store and breaks into a flailing run towards them.

He peels out, swerves for the main road, steers them under the overpass and turns hard left to fly onto the highway. Faster this time. There might be more of them coming.

Anywhere from sixty seconds to five minutes later, he notices that Cullen is holding his right side.

“Are you hurt?”

After a grimace, Cullen nods. “Yes,” he chokes out. “But it’s all right.”

“Jesus Christ, is it bad?” He slows down so he can lean over and look at where Cullen is gripping. Deep red blood soaks steadily through his shirt under his hand. “Oh, shit. Shit, Cullen!”

“It’s all right,” Cullen repeats.

“You’ve been stabbed for fuck’s sake!”

“It’s not—” He cuts himself off to suck in a harsh breath. “It’s fine. He just...nicked me pretty good,” he murmurs, lifting his hand away and frowning at whatever he sees. “Bleeding’ll stop in a minute.”

“I’m pulling over.”

“Dorian, don’t—

“Do _not_ argue with me.”

“Let’s leave it for now, just keep—

“We are not leaving it!” Dorian snarls. They approach an intersection where the highway lets out into a suburban neighbourhood lined with bungalows, and he turns, swings another right, then a left, and cruises to the end of a cul-de-sac. One of the houses next to them has a garage. He points at Cullen, “Don’t move.”

He takes their revolver and jumps the fence, pokes carefully around the building until he locates a door that creaks open with a nudge. He climbs a small set of concrete steps up to the house itself, and finds the entrance obstructed with a heap of furniture. Old tools line the garage floor, rusty screwdrivers and clamps, assorted car repair paraphernalia, and he tosses a wrench over the barricade and into the house. It crashes on the floor, batters to a stop.

Nothing. Silence. No eager inhuman gasping, no howls or high hisses, and no cries of alarm. He hauls the garage door open, hops back into the Jeep, pulls inside, and closes the door behind them again. If anyone is in pursuit, they’ve got a whole neighbourhood to search. If they can even pin down what direction they drove off in. It’s a vague worry, but he chooses to feel secure in the belief that they’ve left most of their pursuers dead behind them.

“Inside,” he orders Cullen after shouldering his pack. He tugs the Jeep door open and helps him to his feet, aids him up the stairs and into a disheveled living room where he lays him out on the couch. There’s a fireplace and an old kettle. He shuffles together a collection of tinder and sets it alight to boil water for cleaning the wound. “Let me see.”

Bloodied fingers curl in the remnants of his shirt, and Cullen exposes his side. The slice runs just above the hip, about five inches long, still seeping blood.

“It’s not too deep,” Cullen says through a clenched jaw.

Wincing, Dorian helps him keep pressure on it. “It’s deep enough.”

They pass a tense few minutes waiting on the water to boil. Once it’s rolling, he tosses in two old face cloths to sterilize them, and they get down to work.

“Fuck!” Cullen barks when Dorian touches the cloth to torn flesh. He sucks air through his teeth. “Stings like _shit_.”

They manage.

His first aid kit is as remembered: low on luxuries, but solid on the essentials. Learning to suture came early in his post-apocalyptic education, except...

“I can stitch you up, but I’m afraid I don’t have much for the pain.”

Cullen puffs out a thick laugh. “Do what you need to do.”

He preps the needle by first holding it to a lit match, then swabbing it with a splash of vodka. The hemostat feels odd in his grip but muscle memory awakens as he adjusts it in his palm. “You may want something to bite on,” he says, offering the extra boiled cloth.

“Nn,” Cullen grunts. But he takes it and holds it close to his mouth, anyway.

“Here we go.” Dorian works as quickly as he can, threading the needle through the skin and gently tugging to close the wound. “If you like, I can distract you with my charm and canny wit,” he adds softly. “Though I suppose I ought to keep my sharp tongue to myself, since you hardly need a second injury.”

It’s a weak joke, even considering the circumstances, but it gets a sniffed laugh, at least.

Careful to ensure his throws give him good knots, he pulls each one taut but not too tight. He asks Cullen a series of inane questions: what was the last movie you saw before the world ended? How did you take your coffee? Did pineapple belong on pizza? Cullen answers between grunts— _that sad space movie, milk and sugar, yes of course it did_ —and flinches every other stitch or so, his abdomen tense. Eventually he stuffs the cloth between his teeth, but he’s a trooper. It’s a nasty cut, perhaps not as grim as all the blood made it seem, but still nasty. A few days and a careful eye on it should do the trick. He finishes his last suture, clips the thread, and extracts a cotton ball from the sparse supply to rub the area down one last time with disinfectant before taping a patch of gauze in place.

“Done,” he says, patting Cullen’s arm.

The idiot immediately tries to sit up. Dorian gasps like he’s five years old and has dropped a piece of his grandmother’s china. “Don’t!” He puts a hand on Cullen’s chest but doesn’t force him down, doesn’t want him to engage his muscles more than he already is.

Cullen snorts and finishes easing himself upward. He takes a breath, winces, and swings his legs over the side of the couch, which puts them face to face. “I’m good,” he says, one of his hands landing on Dorian’s thigh. “Thank you.”

Their faces hover a spare few inches apart. “You’re welcome,” Dorian replies. “Idiot.”

Calm comes over the room. Cullen kisses him, their beards rustling and prickling together. Dorian lets his eyes close and kisses back, feels Cullen’s calloused fingers scrape against the side of his neck. They’re both salty with sweat, stinking of spent adrenaline and blood. When Cullen pulls away, he ducks his scruffy blond head down and laughs softly to himself.

“What?” Dorian presses, leaning to keep their cheeks close. “Did I do it wrong?”

Cullen noses forward into the crook of his neck and rests his face there. “Been a hell of a couple of days, hasn’t it.”

“Hm.” That’s one way to phrase it. Dorian turns to ease Cullen a little closer. “Has anyone ever told you you’ve a talent for understatement?”

The body he holds tenses with a snicker, followed by a little grumpy yelp. “Ah... Hurts to laugh.”

“Hurts to laugh? Surely that can’t be right.”

That makes him laugh again. “Asshole...”

They stay there, almost holding one another, for a couple of minutes. Then, Dorian breaks the reverie. “We need to eat.” All the running has caught him up suddenly, and his stomach is pinched. The kitchen cabinets are bare, but in the very back of a pantry adjacent the laundry room he finds a packet of rice, some lima beans, diced tomatoes. There’s some tinned tuna as well, but that he doesn’t trust.

He cobbles something together, cooking everything in an old cast iron pot over the fireplace.

“We should keep moving,” Cullen says after cleaning his plate. “Plenty of daylight left.” His face is white as milk, and the marked purple under his eyes stands out starker than ever. He’s in no shape to travel.

It would be easy to shore up the blockades in the house and settle in one of the bedrooms. They could get in a few hours sleep, and Dorian could comb the block for supplies. “Let’s stay on a bit. You need to rest, and I want to look around.”

“They’ll be coming for their men, Dorian. And the cars.” Cullen pats Buzzard, who joined him on the couch after a prolonged hunt in the ravine behind the house where he seems to have caught something and eaten it, judging by the blood on his whiskers. “We should just...keep moving.”

Maybe he’s right. Maybe they won’t be safe here. Too close to the highway, if whoever’s left does decide to ferret them out. “Fine, but you sleep awhile. I’m going to search the neighborhood.”

Cullen frowns, but obeys.

House by house, Dorian scavenges, picking up the fragments of what others have left behind.


	10. Chapter 10

The long highway sprawls ahead of them, only the odd wreckage impeding their momentum. He passes the metal husks as though he were passing traffic, even uses his blinker once or twice for the laugh it nets from Cullen.

They’re on the road north, after skirting Calgary. A city that size, especially one boasting an active zone, poses too many threats. Wisest for a pair of old Fireflies to avoid any run-ins with the military, and they’ve had about all they can take of roving hunters for the time being. They do, however, need somewhere to sleep tonight.

“We should start considering accommodations,” Dorian says as they pass another collection of decrepit farm buildings. They’re rolling through the endless rangeland again, under a massive sky. Déjà vu from Dorian’s days before he stumbled across the red barn.

Pale and hurting, Cullen sits in the passenger seat, unfocused eyes trained on the scenery. “Keep north a ways further,” he says a minute later. “We’ll find some place off the five-ninety.”

“Just...point the way.”

As it turns out, there are plenty of options, though not all of them viable. One farm is enclosed with high barbed wire fences and smoke rises in the distance, so they keep on further down the road. If there are people alive, they can hear the engine. Best to remove any opportunities for curiosity.

North another thirty or so kilometers, to be safe, into a tiny hamlet showing no signs of life. They drive around until Dorian chooses a house, and he climbs out to vet it. He slinks around the upended sofa covering the back door to find a cluttered, reasonably preserved home, down to the few dirty dishes perched in the sink and an abandoned suitcase half-packed on a chair. He pulls the car into the garage and Cullen and the dog come inside, where they read until it gets too dark to see. Then, fitful sleep.

In the morning, they raid the cabinets in search of breakfast. Olives, tomato paste, pre-packaged cornbread mix. He tears the corner open to investigate, certain pantry moths will have ruined it, but it’s been in a plastic bin. It’s fine. They stir it up with water and cook it in a cast iron skillet. Frankly, it’s fucking delicious.

“I haven’t had anything even a little like bread, in...years?” Cullen says, eyes searching his memory for the instance. “Years,” he repeats, more certain. What they don’t eat goes into a cloth, to be saved for lunch.

On the road again, they discuss routes.

“Keep clear of Edmonton. Military still has a zone up there. Last I heard, they weren’t exactly taking applications.”

Meaning they’ll be shot on sight, or at least have their vehicle confiscated and be left to starve outside the zone walls. Neither situation ideal, obviously.

“Beyond that?” Until today, there’s been no set destination on this journey. Only a vague concern with outrunning what’s left of the crew that wants them dead, and keeping the car road-worthy.

“Jasper,” Cullen says, tapping a finger on the dashboard, sliding it northwest. “We go to Jasper.”

“What’s in Jasper?”

Cullen pauses, considers for a few moments. He puts a hand on his injured side, as if the pressure will alleviate the hurt. “I had a friend there, once.” His hand travels from his wound to the tag around his neck. “She might still be there.”

As compelling a reason as any. “Jasper it is, then.”

They stop in a one horse town to see if there’s anything left in a sporting goods store. Most of the shelves have been picked clean—a lot of the malls and other retail outlets near zones often are—but they do snag some fishing gear and a few extra arrows. There’s a thick wad of fifties taped beneath the register, and when Dorian finds it, he laughs. With a whoop, he throws it all in the air, lets it flutter down.

“You know, I’d almost forgotten how weird Canadian money was,” he says, watching the red bills float to the floor.

“Smelled like maple syrup,” Cullen tells him.

“It did fucking _not_ ,” Dorian shoots back, but as soon as Cullen turns away he’s sniffing one of the bills to be certain. There’s a whiff of something, plasticy and sweet and hard to pinpoint. He clicks his tongue once. “Maple syrup, my ass...” He tosses it aside, reaches instead for a fake candle lit by an LED. It still works, so into the bag it goes.

Buzzard, using that particular magic that some dogs possess, finds a stash of brand new tennis balls and carries one around with great pride the entire time they sift through the store’s remnants.

They spend a few minutes in town trying to siphon gasoline out of parked cars. Newer cars are better bets, and they do manage to top up one of their containers. Whether or not the fuel is viable... Well. They’ll find that out the hard way if they stall halfway through the Rocky Mountains.

Back in the car with their fresh supplies, they put in another couple of hours before Cullen’s constant shifting becomes a distraction.

“You hurting?” Dorian asks.

“Mm.” Neither an affirmation nor a denial.

“Cullen...”

“Yes it hurts,” he growls. “But there’s nothing for it.”

Dorian turns at the next range road, silencing the immediate protest from the passenger side by turning on the stereo. He doesn’t recognize the band, if he’s honest. Metal, but melodic under the harsh instrumentation. He likes it, whatever it is, and begins to hum along with a riff.

Cullen simply stares at him, slack-jawed.

The landscape here turns hilly, greener. Trees taller than a few feet, and enough of them all together to almost call the terrain forested. He takes a chance on a dirt road with a wide open gate, and they carry on for a further ten minutes.

“Holy shit.” Dorian turns the stereo off and slows the Jeep.

They’ve found their way onto a massive property, not a farm but a stretch of land cluttered with evergreens, poplars, and white birch. The house that sits at the top of the sloped driveway is giant, rather new. Built with oil money, before money devolved from crowned king into meaningless confetti.

It’s possible they’re the first ones here since the outbreak. Unlikely, but possible. They park the car in the shelter of a thicket, finishing their approach on foot.

As they walk, Dorian turns to watch Buzzard snuffle along the overgrown road with his tail held loosely out. The dog is unperturbed so far. Cullen watches the animal, too, and they glance at one another, reassured.

The front door is locked, and the downstairs windows have been firmly boarded from the inside. Not an insurmountable problem, just an annoying one. Around the rear of the house is another locked door, but Dorian spots a fallen branch that’s gone through an upstairs window. “Look.” The roof isn’t steep, and from the back porch there’s a place where a strong person might be able to worm their way aboard the shingles.

“I’ll boost you up,” Cullen says, positioning himself against the siding.

“But your wound...”

“It’s fine.”

The set of his mouth tells Dorian there’s no use arguing. He does his best to hoist himself under his own power, setting only the point of his boot on Cullen’s shoulder. Once above, he takes stock of the blockage: a sizeable branch from a very old tree. He grips it, readying to pull, and realizes it’s much heavier than expected. “Oh, shit...”

“Does it need both of us?”

“I think so, but your—”

“Don’t say it.”

Sighing exasperation, he flattens himself on the roof and glances around the yard. “There, the lawn chair,” he points to the long grass. Dutifully, Cullen retrieves it to use for a leg up. Dorian lowers an arm for him anyway, and he grabs hold. “You’re going to tear your stitches,” he warns him.

“For the love of... Just help me, goddamn it.”

The whole grimacing, grunting ordeal is quite a performance, but the two of them manage to haul him onto the shingles.

With their combined strength, they clear the window. He uses his crowbar to knock the remaining glass out of the frame to the floor inside. The last thing either of them needs is another deep cut. “Me first?” he asks, readying to step inside.

Cullen’s palm flattens against Dorian’s abdomen, halting him. “Wait.”

He pulls back, and they watch the air move in the room for a long, breathless moment, to see if the sunlight catches on spores.

Nothing. Cullen drops in with a grunt, moves quietly around the perimeter of the bedroom. He stands at the doorway with an ear tuned to the rest of the house. “I think we’re alright,” he says softly.

And they are. Nobody home save some vermin, a family of field mice who scatter into the walls as they enter the hallway. The upper floor is in surprisingly good shape. Dust thick as a winter pelt covers every object, but it’s otherwise untouched; rife with that museum hush of lives once lived.

Once they’ve combed the house quickly, everywhere but the attic, they let the dog in. Buzzard wags and snuffles and immediately begins hunting the field mice who live in the walls. He’s better at keeping his belly full than they are, but he does occasionally try to share. It’s disgusting, and they definitely refuse him, but he does try.

Upstairs, Dorian begins the work of amassing useful items. In the bathroom, there’s unopened soap. Shampoo. Brand new toothbrushes and toothpaste, dental floss. Everything expired, of course, but what does it matter now. The only ones manufacturing anything in this day and age are the military, and the only ones benefiting are soldiers and the lucky few residents in the zones.

“Dorian?” Cullen calls from somewhere in another bedroom.

“Yes?”

He makes his way around to the doorway he heard Cullen’s voice waft out of. The room is empty, however, and he frowns. There’s a walk-in closet on the far side of it, and before he can cross the carpet a jacket flies out and lands square against Dorian’s chest. At a glance, he can tell it’s filled with down. Well-made, almost brand new. Ugly as sin, the kind of thing he would’ve scoffed at before the apocalypse, but by god is he ever thankful to see it now. Before he can collect himself, a big wool sweater follows the same trajectory, flumping against his face.

“Mmf,” he squawks. “Would you kindly,” a shake of the head to dislodge the fabric, “desist a moment?”

Laughter from the closet. “Look at all this!” Cullen comes out holding sweaters, shirts, jeans that look like they might not already be worn thin in six places by years of hard scrabbling, some new socks, shoes, and underwear still in its original package. Black, and close to the right size. “Everything was sealed in those big plastic storage bags. Damn near smells freshly washed...”

It isn’t food, but moving into the winter months, warmth is the second most pressing issue.

They take their packs off and begin the process of trying things on. What would normally be a grim, solitary bit of business borders on entertaining with the two of them involved. Cullen is all leg. Ropey and spare, skinny as anything, moving stiffly due to the knife slice above his hip. Dorian knows he’s built much the same, though it’s the fundamentals that interest him. He’s shorter by an inch, has a longer torso, fuller thighs. If they could go back in time, to before subsistence was the sole option, Dorian suspects they’d look very different from one another. Cullen might even be thickset, given the breadth of his fuzzy chest.

Not now. Long-legged Cullen stands in his saggy briefs and pink-tinged bandage and wrestles a woolly sweater over his head. He pulls it down, notes that it’s roomy but right in the shoulders, and goes still when he realizes Dorian is watching.

“Think red is my colour?” he asks, already pulling the sweater off again.

“Actually, that’s burgundy,” Dorian informs him.

This sweater too whumps against his chest, and they both laugh.

They swap out most of their old under layers for what they’ve found, keep two sweaters each, and switch their ruined shoes for better ones. It might be a pain to carry so much at some point down the line, but come winter they’ll be wearing them round the clock and if they forsake this bounty— _cashmere_ for crying out loud, a scrap of softness in a world sorely devoid of comforts—there’ll be nothing but regrets later. For now they’ve got the car, which means they don’t have to be desperately selective.

Downstairs, the spoils are equally plentiful. The pantry boasts a slew of canned goods that are out of date but probably still fit for consumption. “Lentils!” Dorian cries, grinning as he lays hands on the bag. He’s missed lentils. There’s a selection of other dried beans as well, some peas, corn, rice, lots of flour that’s been stored airtight, all of it blissfully free of vermin.

“We’ll try a couple of these later,” Cullen says of the cans. “If they’re good, we’ll take the rest with us.”

It’s strange, standing in a house whose interior is in working order. As though the boards covering the windows were hammered up with such great care, by someone who believed they’d be home soon, that everything within the walls has been preserved by quiet enchantment.

“Do you think we’re safe here?” Dorian asks, watching the dust they’ve stirred up resettle in a thin blade of light. It falls, endless as space, in the narrow yellow warmth cast by the sun passing between two fitted planks above the kitchen sink.

Cullen stands beside him, the front of his shoulder and chest touching Dorian’s back. “For tonight.”

The canned goods turn out to be bacteria free and edible. There’s also an overgrown garden alongside the house, where they discover an abundance of tomatoes, basil, lettuces, and green beans. Dorian finds an old compost heap under the tree, and sure enough when he turns the soil over with a rusty shovel, out tumble a handful of perfect yellow potatoes. Plants carrying on, reseeding themselves over the seasons.

They eat well. Rest for the afternoon, play a few hands of cards. The evening is spent heating buckets of water from the nearby creek for cleaning themselves up. Before it gets dark, Dorian drags one of the mattresses off a bed upstairs, fits it in the corner of the room against two walls. The windows on this side of the house are inaccessible from the roof they climbed in on, and they barricade the door with a desk and chair. Beyond that, the dog will let them know if anything goes bump in the night.

Clean, full, and settled, Dorian finds himself suddenly leaden tired and eager to bed down. His leg still hurts, the nagging ache of a bone bruise on his calf from that stupid couch back in the lakeside town, but it’ll either heal or it won’t. Another for the list of nagging aches, which grows longer month by month.

It’s a warm evening, but he shakes the dust out of a blanket and unfurls it overtop of himself for the body memory of security it brings.

Without asking, Cullen crawls onto the mattress beside him. Buzzard climbs aboard too, at their feet.

Cullen’s wound has been washed and re-dressed, and it’s a bit inflamed but nothing unusual. In the morning, Dorian will boil another cloth and soak it in saltwater, force Cullen to sit with the compress on for a while before they leave.

Behind him, Cullen grunts, twitches. He’s on his left side, but it’s clear the position must be tugging his stitches.

“Here.” Dorian turns, urging him to lie on his back, and nestles in against him. “Better?”

“Mm.” Affirmation this time.

He has no words to describe the solace of another man’s chest rising and falling beneath his head. No words for how good it feels to be clean, to be wearing clothes that don’t reek of old sweat and filth that won’t wash out, no matter how harsh the scrubbing. He misses Felix, he misses his parents, his home, how it felt to wake up in an uncertain world where there was still hope for turning things around. Here, the uncertainty is crushing, and without possibility. There’s no going back.

Rain starts to fall, a light rattle through the eaves.

He buries his face against Cullen’s neck, which prompts an uneven intake of breath and the press of lips to his hair, the catch of beard bristles next to his forehead, disheveling as they tickle, and the tears he’s fighting win out. Only a couple, this time.

“I’m afraid of the rain,” he murmurs. “That it might...start, and never stop again.” He knows how nonsensical it sounds, but they’re tired. He doesn’t know what else to say.

Beneath his head, Cullen breathes in, and out. “Just gotta keep treading water,” he rumbles softly, drifting headlong into sleep.

For a half-dreamt non-response, it’s damn near the truth. They’ve made it this far.

Dorian closes his eyes.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Extremely mild sexual content ahead.

First light glows blue through the window and the dog whines at the door to be let out. Dorian extricates himself from Cullen’s arms and rises to accompany the animal, needing to empty his bladder, too.

A thin mist drifts in the trees, moisture from the rain evaporating as the sun rises. Birdsong lilts, sweet and bright, and he stands awhile to take it in. This must’ve been a lovely place to live, before. Too remote and rural for his tastes, back when it was possible to have a preference for cities save the occasional weekend away, but for someone who loved the outdoors—

The dog barks, once.

Dorian’s veins fill with ice. He’s left his crowbar inside. He begins backing toward the door of the house, waiting for Buzzard to reappear from the underbrush.

In a swell of footsteps Cullen is behind him, one palm pressed to his injured side. “Where...?”

“Over there,” Dorian hushes, pointing to the western field where he can see the outline of a roof—either a barn or a byre.

For a few moments they’re frozen, ready to bolt indoors and grab weapons, blockade everything. From the direction of the field a sharp screech cuts the mist. Dorian’s fingers cinch in the front of Cullen’s t-shirt. “Infected,” he says.

But Cullen holds his ground. When Dorian turns in confusion to look at him, the beginning of a smile quirks the corner of his scarred lip. There’s another noise far away, lower this time.

“Not infected,” Cullen says, taking Dorian’s hand and beginning to stroll toward the sound. “Horses.”

Neighing. _Of course_ it’s neighing. He lets out a tense breath and follows tentatively as they move through the trees until they come to where part of a wooden fence has crumbled into a pile of rot. Buzzard lies down in the tall grass, his herding breed genes shining through clear as the freckles on his snout as he creeps toward a trio composed of two big bays and a smaller yearling. They don’t seem to trust him but aren’t entirely frightened, either. He’s no wolf. Their ears prick when they spot Cullen, however, and one of them snorts.

“Slowly,” Cullen says, directing Dorian to approach part of the fence that’s still standing. They lean there, watching the animals. Buzzard wags his tail, almost like he believes they could be large, strange dogs that he might play with, but as soon as he gets too close one of them kicks up a fuss and the dog withdraws before Cullen even has to whistle for him.

The horses move off, to graze greener pastures away from prying eyes.

“Wonder if you could bring them in, if you were careful,” Cullen murmurs. “They’re not even feral, really, they’ve just...been on the loose a few years.”

“Considering how _I_ feel about strange people approaching me at this point,” Dorian says, stepping back from the fence as he dusts old crumbs of wood from his arms, “I doubt they’d be too amenable.”

Sadness curves the line above Cullen’s thick brows. “Maybe.” He wipes his nose on the ball of his thumb. “Got no tack, anyway.”

“No hat, either,” Dorian reminds him. The stetson was a casualty of being ousted from the barn.

“Right.” Laughing, Cullen shakes his head. “Shit. That was a nice hat...”

Buzzard leaps over the fence for hell of it, to get their attention. Whatever injury the hunters did him, he’s recovered. Bouncy and clear-eyed. Dogs lack the necessary thinking skills to grasp the ramifications of an apocalypse, and damned if they aren’t better off for it. The happy animal jams his head in a thick clump of grass and moments later gives chase to an ousted rabbit.

They go back to the house, where Dorian prepares the salt compress for Cullen’s wound.

Because of the garden and stocked pantry, they decide to stay on a few days. The creek is a nice perk too, and Dorian heats water each evening at twilight so they can both bathe from a small bowl and pitcher. He still can’t believe how good it feels to be clean. Harder still to believe how acclimated he’s gotten to being persistently filthy. With regret, they rearrange some of the furniture to blockade the front door, and shore up the defenses around the house here and there with extra planks found in a crawl space. Satisfied that their efforts will hold most threats at bay, they get down to the important work of resting.

Cullen sleeps a lot. His side is healing nicely, but not perfectly. Eating two solid meals a day helps, as does the relaxation and bathing, but the wound stays red at the edges, nagging him. Nothing life-threatening, but enough to keep it tender.

Not so tender that he doesn’t curl against Dorian in the night, that they don’t lie together in the slow golden hours of the late afternoon, dozing nude on top of one another, over-warm but unwilling to break apart.

“When did this happen?” Dorian asks one evening as they sit side by side on the mattress, post-bath. Under his fingers he traces white scar tissue on the inside of Cullen’s left upper arm, a matching stripe along his ribs just below the armpit, each raised welt smooth with age.

Cullen turns his head over his shoulder to glance at him. “...Couple years after the outbreak. I’d heard one or two zones were taking people, if you signed on to be military. Guess they were running low on patrol fodder. But, I was hungry and figured...” He shrugs. “When I got there, they’d already met their quota and long story short, that’s what you get for asking politely to be let into a quarantine zone. Damn near blew my arm off...”

“Bastards.” About par for the course, from what Dorian’s seen. The scarring is minimal, which suggests the wound was well-tended. “Who patched you up?”

He lets out a breath through parted lips. “Fireflies. Found me a couple klicks away from the containment wall, bleeding everywhere. Their doc put me to rights, told me there was a place for me with them.”

“And you stayed?”

The silver chain around his neck sits stark against the freckled skin of his naked back. “I did.”

“But you left again.”

Cullen shifts, covers the cut on his side with a palm. Testing it. “...I did.”

If he asks why, he won’t get answers. He’s come to recognize the set of Cullen’s shoulders when he’s feeling stubborn, and they’re firmed into the pose now. He has his guesses, and truthfully it doesn’t much matter. Something bad happened, people died. The details of how and why change, but the core truth remains. Whatever happened, to either of them, they’re both here now. Naked, in the middle of nowhere, holed up in a cozy ranch house somewhere a stone’s throw east of the Rockies.

Quiet. Dust waterfalls through a sunbeam. Cullen turns under his palm, kneels for a moment and puts a calloused hand to Dorian’s hip. From there, they stretch out on the covers, kiss, fall into a slow rut. Nothing rushed. After a few minutes of steady writhing, enough to work up a sheen of sweat, Dorian can tell Cullen’s side is grieving him, so he wets his hand and reaches between them to take hold of Cullen and bring him off. He’s an easy touch. Panting into Dorian’s neck, he tenses, comes in stoic silence, minus a harsh breath or two. Dorian rests for a moment, to appreciate the pleasurable huffs and sighs, the unspooling tension of Cullen’s body beneath him. Then, he takes hold of himself. Once Cullen regains his senses, he helps, one hand between Dorian’s legs, working his balls, knuckles grazing against sensitive inner thigh.

He comes, less quietly than Cullen but not by much, only a few soft sounds low in his throat. It’s been a long time since he felt safe enough for this to feel good. Years since he could lie with a lover and bask in the sticky afterglow. Eventually, Cullen reaches for their bath cloth and they clean up, then doze off. When they stir, they intertwine and do it all over again.

Spent, finding his way back to deep breathing, Cullen sprawls half on top of Dorian, his weight on his left side.

“How are you feeling?” Dorian asks, touching a spot close to his stitches.

“Nn. It’s fine,” comes the stock response, groggy with endorphins.

Dorian pats him on the flank. “It’s still a little red. I’m going to cut some of that lavender in the yard and make you a poultice,” he tells him.

He feels Cullen sniff a chuckle as much as he hears it.

“I know, I know. But it does help.”

Rain threatens over the rangeland to the east on the morning they decide to leave. Dorian drives the Jeep up to the house and they load what’s left of the supplies in the back, along with the dog, and set out.

“Wish we could’ve seen those horses again,” Cullen says from the passenger seat, framed by the blur of trees on the other side of the window.

Dorian sets a hand on his thigh, and squeezes.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realize now I forgot to clarify that past Dorian/Felix is a thing, in case anyone really hates that? It's mentioned a few times in this chapter.

“There’s nothing here, is there.”

No immediate reply. Dorian turns to Cullen, waiting on him to affirm the conclusion.

Cullen is up to his elbows in banker’s boxes full of file folders. Stacks of them litter the corner office in a building above Jasper’s main street. Lips set in a grim line, Cullen shakes his head.

At ground level they found a defunct Armed Forces vehicle with a Firefly emblem on the hood and managed to clamber from it onto a second storey balcony, then inside. There were Fireflies here at some point, judging by the abandoned equipment and stacks of books, but they’ve long since packed up their most important belongings and departed.

“This friend of yours, they were a Firefly too?” Dorian asks.

Cullen shows no sign of tension or pause as he flips through an old farmer’s almanac. “Sort of,” he says, not looking at him.

“Sort of?”

He must deem the almanac worthwhile, since he slips it into a pocket. Binders line a shelf above a desk near the window, and Cullen pulls down an armful of them, sending up a waft of stale, musty air. “She was military, actually.”

Dorian stares at him. “Surely you mean ex-military.”

“Not back then,” Cullen shakes his head. “Now, maybe. If she’s still alive.” He flips through the papers, revealing schematics, a large blueprint. Technical specifications. He pushes the blueprints away. “Military up here is...a little different than down south,” he says. “She was RCMP, but when everything went off the rails the mounties fell in alongside the army. Maintain a united front, all that...grandstanding bullshit.” He swivels and rubs at his stitches. The cut has been itching him the past couple of days, which is a good sign. “Anyway, some of them were more interested in working _with_ the Fireflies than against them.”

“That’s all well and good, but I assume they still kill people.”

Cullen offers him his hard stare right back. “So have we.”

This isn’t a conversation he’s game to have, today. Instead, he turns his attention to a map of BC on the wall. The southern portion is marked by red felt pen, arrows drawn to mystery points which look to have been, at one time, explained by sticky notes that have all fallen on the floor and blown away. Dorian finds a few, but the words are smeared or simply strings of letters and numbers. Not in any code he personally can decipher.

“This is pointless,” Cullen mutters a minute later. “Let’s get back to the Jeep.”

They parked outside of town, well hidden from the highway, anticipating that an engine would draw attention from any remaining denizens. The dog keeps busy snuffling about on the street below, with instructions to wait for them, which usually means they’ll have to call him back from some garbage heap or other.

“What do you make of this?” Dorian indicates the map, holds out his post-its.

Cullen takes the stack, flipping through quickly. The line above his brow deepens. “Not too sure.” He squints at the map, which lacks city names and is instead topographical, divided by region. With one finger he begins tracing the red lines. “Kamloops,” he murmurs. “Kelowna, Golden, Prince George...”

“More familiar with the province than I am, I see.”

“I uh, drove long haul for a few years,” he says. “Covered a lot of ground.”

Now there’s a new tidbit. A truck driver. Somehow it fits and it doesn’t. “Huh.” He steps forward and peers at the map, watches Cullen tap here and there, puzzling it out. “But no guesses?”

His answer is another shake of the head. “Could be places they planned to have garrisons, but...”

When it all happened, it happened so fast. One day, Dorian had been buying his morning coffee at his favorite café and checking his email, readying an order of new books to plan his spring course materials, and the next, police had cordoned off half of downtown and the army was rolling in with construction equipment to wall in the city.

He stares at the map, and notices that there’s an indent on the paper. Someone pressed hard to write a long gone note, and he angles himself to get a better look at the light reflecting off the shapes. “Agri... com... zero three?” he reads aloud, changing sides to see if that gives a new impression.

“Huh. That mean anything to you?” Cullen asks.

“Not especially.” It’s written above what he believes to be the Okanagan, where several red lines fall close together. “I think whatever it is, it’s here,” he points. “Give or take.”

“Kelowna, or thereabouts.” Cullen chews at the inside of his lip. After a long exhale he near whispers, “That’s a long drive.”

“If we can find a little more gas, then…maybe?” It’s still hard to say. If they get there, and there’s nothing, they will have spent all their resources on a fool’s errand, though in this world it’s easy to argue that almost any option may as well be called precisely that.

Cullen’s expression firms into a resolute mask, and he stands tall, broad as he can for as skinny as he is and with that itchy cut in his side pestering him. “I don’t know how the roads are these days, but... What do you think? You up for trying?”

Fool’s errand or otherwise, it’s a firm direction. The tiniest grain of possibility. Dorian takes a deep breath, and nods. “Let’s go.”

In preparation, they cruise slowly along the main road and through the neighbourhood outside of town, managing to hunt up some extra fuel. One house gives Dorian a sinking feeling, and sure enough once they nudge the door aside, he notices a slow drift of spores from the basement stairwell. They close the door and leave. In another house, he finds a pristine cell phone sitting on a coffee table; sleek, unbroken, and perfectly useless. He holds it up, pretends to point the camera at Cullen. “Smile,” he teases.

Cullen snorts. “You miss those things?”

“You don’t?”

For a moment, it looks like he wants to say something. A small pull works into his cheek, but then disappears. “I think I miss bread more,” he answers instead.

Dorian laughs, chucks the phone down on the sofa. “Personally, I’ve thought about it, and it’s a toss-up between chocolate and mangoes.”

“Ahh, yes. Ice cream and coffee, for me,” Cullen adds.

They don’t linger long. On the way out of town they bump over the train tracks, and then they’re en route south yet again. It’s a narrow, old highway, and their first trial is only a few minutes later when they have no choice but to drive over a dubious bridge, its uneven surface sunken from lack of maintenance. Dorian takes it at a slow crawl. It holds. Jointly, they exhale, then laugh at one another.

They pass a collection of cabins surrounded by a cement fence, exhibiting no signs of life. Blocky military lettering marks the main gate. How they planned to keep themselves alive up here through the winter is anybody’s guess. Perhaps there was some hope that the bitter cold would impede the spread of infection, and that the wildlife might be abundant enough to hunt as sustenance. Considering that the place is empty, he’d wager it didn’t go well.

Under less dire circumstances, the drive would be nothing short of stunning. Distant mountains rise in all directions, hillsides brimming with evergreens and grasses, the tallest peaks tipped with scraps of remnant snow. Layers of high cloud coast the blue of late summer sky. A not so secret part of Dorian wishes they were here on vacation, their greatest worry a bear encounter. If only this were another version of himself, one living in a kinder world, that acquiesced to a camping trip with a new outdoorsy beau hoping to impress him. He would’ve failed, of course, and after two nights they would’ve wound up checked into a lodge for the hot showers and soft bed and wifi, not to mention a nice meal in a restaurant.

The daydream fades, fleeting. What replaces it is a hollow longing for Felix, an image of one of their shared mornings on campus before they went off to teach. He swallows at the constriction in his throat. On the side of the road sits a toppled wooden barrier, a rusted government sign warning the presence of a deadly contagion and to proceed with extreme caution. He’s surprised no one has burned the wood for kindling.

In the shadow of rocky peaks, skirting the Athabasca river, they drive until Cullen mumbles something about needing to stretch his legs; his favorite euphemism for bodily functions. Dorian pulls over, and all three of them stroll off in separate directions to carry out their business. They walk around a little afterward, working life back into stiff limbs. “Care to drive for a bit?” Dorian asks, holding out the key.

Cullen blinks, as if it hadn’t occurred to him such a thing was possible. “Oh. Sure.”

From the passenger seat, the highway unfurls forever. He dozes here and there, trusting that Cullen knows better than he does where they’re headed. Cars off to the side of the road are few and far between, some looking like their driver walked away ten minutes ago save for the ruined tires and coating of pollen, pine needles obscuring the windshields. They roll on through verdant green and isolation until they descend into the ice field.

Around the bend near a turn off, Cullen drifts to a halt. “Want to have a look at the glacier?”

Saying no seems wrong somehow. To arrive at this place and drive on, unmoved… “Alright.”

They park at the base of a foot path, follow it up to the edge of the receding ice. Safety lines and warnings are strewn across the terrain, but they don’t climb much beyond them. He knows the proper response is awe, deference to the ancient realms of geological time, the sensation of being an ant on an anthill, but none of that comes. The dog laps at a pool of old water, drinking the mountain.

Fingers knit with his. Cullen looks at him, smiling, the corners of his eyes crinkled on either side of the freckles dusting his nose. That, Dorian realizes, is where the awe is. A man standing on a glacier at the end of the world, smiling.

He covers his mouth and wipes at his eyes before they spill over, breathes deep and looks to the clouds. _Goodbye,_ he thinks very softly, listening to the trickle of melting ice, _to everyone and everything that has moved on_.

They make their way back to the Jeep, and keep driving.

Dusk comes quickly out here. The transition from sunlight to shadow brings a remarkable change in temperature. They’ve passed no towns for some time now, only vacant campsites, one roadside tollbooth.

“We might have to sleep in here,” Dorian murmurs, glancing over his shoulder, trying to mentally configure how they’ll all fit.

Cullen slows the car. He’s eyeing a massive semi pulled off on the shoulder. “Maybe not.” Fifty feet along the road there’s an unpaved hill that drops down below the highway. They park the Jeep there, well out of sight, and climb back toward the truck. Hoisting himself onto the hood, Cullen peers past the windshield for a few moments, then drops to the gravel again. “Empty.” And locked, of course. From the depths of his pack, he produces a piece of wire and proceeds to pick the passenger side door. Ten minutes tick away. Buzzard wanders off in boredom, ears perked, on the trail of some unfortunate creature that will become a tasty snack.

Then, a pop. “Got it.” Cullen hops down and creaks the door open. He sticks his head in, hums approval, and climbs aboard, lowering a hand for Dorian. “Not ideal but hell, it’s nicer than the sleeper I drove.”

Past the two front seats is a gap, and then a relatively large bed and upper bunk. Dorian had always known truckers slept in their cabs, but he’d hardly expected it to look like a tiny mobile hotel room. He gives a short laugh of surprise and sits down on the edge of the bed. Comfortable, or more so than expected. “Good call,” he says, shouldering out of his pack.

For dinner it’s energy bars and jerky, plus a shared military ration that was purportedly chicken at some stage, now freeze dried beyond recognition. At least it’s been easy to keep their canteens full of fresh water out here.

As the sun goes, the warmth follows it, and they huddle on the bed under woollen blankets that smell of ice crystals and stale air.

“Today at the glacier, I...” Cullen huffs, hesitating. “I wanted to ask, but...”

“Hm?”

“Did you lose someone?” he murmurs, his arms tight around Dorian’s waist. “A...a partner, I mean.”

The weight of silence presses the breath from Dorian’s lungs. “Yes,” he says, finally. “A few months ago. We were together since...since before.”

Behind him, Cullen burrows closer. “I’m sorry.”

He shakes his head on the pillow. “I miss him, but... Well. It is what it is.” He’ll miss Felix until all this is over, until whatever fate awaits him rears its ugly head, jaws unhinged. Swallowing, he covers Cullen’s hand. “I’m... I’m glad you’re here.”

The tip of a nose bumps the side of his neck, and Cullen’s calloused palm brushes up and down over his stomach as if trying to soothe a nonexistent ache. It’s pleasant, and Dorian relaxes into the touch, begins the downward slide into the illusion of safety Cullen’s chest at his back provides him, augmented by the presence of the snoozing dog by their feet.

“Does this remind you of your old life?” he whispers in the dark, noticing the bits of the cab interior that glint in the starlight.

Laughter heats his neck, the hot breath cooling in an instant to condensation. “Imagine traffic noise and radio chatter and picture me a lot less scrawny, and it’s close.”

He takes a moment to build the scenario in his mind’s eye; Cullen, ahead of schedule, pulled into a rest area for a nap before a delivery, a little younger, a little more robust. It’s a nice image. He rolls over to face him, and warm up his front. “I was a teacher,” he says. “Classics.”

Cullen smiles. “I bet all your students were in love with you.”

Dorian allows himself a soft laugh. “Oh, one or two. A few, maybe.” It’s too much to think about, all those young faces. Some of them made it, he knows that, but it’s cold comfort considering what’s left of their futures. He closes his eyes against the creeping sadness and lips press into his, Cullen kissing him gently.

“Get some sleep, professor,” he says, voice low and tired.

It’s either sleep or cry, and he’s too tired for crying. He nestles his head down one more time, and lets himself fall away.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yet more canon typical violence, and a bit more dwelling on grief.

The hour before daybreak, they stir. Cullen rummages through the cupboards of the truck cab and comes up with a few granola bars, a tin of salted almonds, a bag of chips. Not an unreasonable breakfast, all things considered, though they save most of the almonds for later.

Cullen let the dog out at first light, and Buzzard’s still at large when the sun finally appears in the east, chasing the pink glow from the sky.

“When did you last see your friend?” Dorian asks while they nibble at the chips.

“Uh...” Squinting, Cullen tilts his head, as if the motion might shake a memory loose. “Three years ago, maybe. Give or take.”

“Did you part on good terms, or...”

He nods. “We did, though Cassandra had strong convictions about how the world ought to work, and I... We didn’t always see eye to eye.”

“Dare I ask?”

“She believed our best shot was to stop fighting one another. That our first priority was finding ways to...to keep looking after people.”

“And you didn’t believe that was possible?”

The pink tip of a tongue traces the lip scar. He shakes his head. “You’ve seen how it is out here. It’s fine to be an idealist but in reality not everyone is going to be as principled, and it will get you killed. Maybe not the first time, maybe not the thirtieth, but eventually it will get you killed.”

“Hm.” Dorian pauses, sucks at a crumb in his teeth. “The day you found me by the barn, I’ve often wondered... Why did you take me in?”

Mouth open, jaw slack, Cullen begins to blush. He stammers, begins one sentence, another, falters, and falls silent. “Alright. I see your point,” he finally grumbles. “You looked sick and, I don’t know, you seemed harmless. Which could’ve easily been a ruse, but... I made the decision to trust you.”

And there it is, the glimmer of ideals under the patina of world-weary cynicism. “The best decision you’ve ever made, I’m sure.”

Cullen rolls his eyes, smiles, leans over and grips his jaw to pull him into a quick, rough kiss.

“I’d always thought you decided I was too handsome to shoot,” Dorian whispers, holding his shirt to keep him from pulling too far away.

With a snort, Cullen ruffles his fingers through the edge of Dorian’s beard, mussing up into his hair. “There is that.”

After they’ve eaten, Dorian spreads back out on the bed, working to remember the name of a relaxed yoga position for spine alignment. It’ll be another long day in the car, and that’s a best case scenario, so it’s wise to stretch and be prepared.

“I’ll bring the Jeep up,” Cullen offers, patting him on the thigh.

“Mm.”

In truth, Dorian would happily spend another night in the truck. Impractical, considering they can’t have a fire inside, and the illusion of enclosed space and protection is exactly that: illusion. Still. He keeps his eyes closed, breathes in through his nose, out again.

He hears something and shoots upright, looks out the front windshield for Cullen, who stands halfway between the truck and the ravine where they hid the Jeep. He’s stopped in place, stiff and alert, eyes east.

The low rumbling builds, tires rushing along asphalt. “No,” Dorian breathes. “Oh no, no...” He scrambles to leap out of the truck, but Cullen takes a step toward him, gesturing him back. “Run,” Dorian says, slamming desperate palms on the dashboard. “God damn you, run!”

Instead, Cullen holds up both hands, raising one higher than the other and making a show of waving it. Staying low behind the dash, Dorian sees sunlight glint off the Jeep key as it flies through the air to land somewhere on the shoulder of the highway.

This isn’t happening. This can’t be happening. Engine noise builds to a crescendo as two military personnel carriers blast past the truck, and a voice on a PA cuts the air. “Don’t move!”

Cullen raises his hands higher, shrinks his shoulders, lowers his head. The vehicles stop dead and five soldiers spill out, four of them pointing guns, two at Cullen, two at the forest anticipating ambush. The last one brandishes a syringe.

“On the ground, now!”

Straining to hear over his pounding heart, Dorian watches, hidden behind the open door of the cab. A soldier bends over and administers the test for infection. The result must be clean, because he double-checks the cap on the syringe and puts it away, then nods at the others.

A taller soldier steps forward. “Get up. You by yourself?”

Cullen slowly stands, then nods, yes.

“You and your shithead friends have been giving us a pretty hard time the past few weeks, you know that?”

With a shake of the head, Cullen says, “I’m not—

The soldier clubs his bad side with the butt of their assault rifle, and Dorian’s hands clap over his mouth to keep from crying out. Cullen crumples, banging the back of his hip on the gravel, clutching at the wound.

“Fuck it, we’re asking to get shot standing around here. Put him in the car,” the soldier barks at the other two, who grab Cullen practically by the scruff and shove him headlong through the back hatch of the personnel carrier.

Buzzard barks, sudden and frightening from the side of the road, but as soon as a gun points at him he sprints into the brush, tail between his legs.

The remaining soldiers load up, and the two vehicles come alive and roll out, single file down the highway.

_Follow them._

Dorian springs to leave the cab, stumbles on a seat, trips, and falls all the way to the gravel outside, banging the air out of his chest and bloodying his palms. Lurching to a stand, he manages a few steps but his knees give out, and he folds into a kneel, numb and aching with a hot trickle of blood flowing between the fingers of his left hand. He clutches it to his stomach and gasps to refill his lungs but all it does is leave him dizzy, black and white snow clouding the edges of his vision as he watches the vehicles disappear around the bend.

Gone. For the best he hasn’t chased them, he grasps after a moment of pause. If he did catch them up, they’d kill him. No question. A strangled cry works out of him as he clenches his fists, futile rage razing his heart to cinders and leaving a sour, burnt taste in his mouth. His eyes point forward, vision blurring, saliva crowding his tongue.

The cast of light on the trees spanning the valley steadily intensifies from pale to saturated golden. It’s cold. Chilled as a cement storeroom in a gas station. Whistled birdsong far off as a dream, and no reply. No reply.

_Buzzard._ He startles, near blind with tears. God only knows how long he’s knelt there; minutes, he hopes. Snot pours over his lip, dripping from his chin, and he smears it all away with one torn up hand and staggers to his feet.

“Buzzard!” He’s lost him. _Oh, christ._ To lose them both, all at once... His chest clenches hard, and he rubs away more tears. “Buzzard, come!” _Please, please..._

Too late, he remembers he shouldn’t be yelling. He’s unarmed, and the soldiers were clearly hunting somebody. A sound in the distance: faint barking.

He whistles, similar to the melancholy song of a robin.

In a rush of footsteps Buzzard flies from the forest at full tilt, arriving to bump against his legs with a whine. Relief stings every bit as much as the shredded meat of his palms. “Good boy,” he squeaks, bending down to hold the dog. “Good boy.”

A shiver wracks him. Dorian retreats to the truck, dog on his heels, and collapses on the floor with his face in his hands, and cries.

Daylight begins to heat the cab. It’s Buzzard who stirs him from the timelessness of grief, licking at his ears and face. He pats the dog, wipes his eyes on his arm. Slowly, he pulls out his first aid kit and begins to pick the gravel from his hands before patching them with a bit of athletic wrap and tape. Morning is rapidly moving into afternoon, and he’s hollow and dry as a corn husk. The odd rogue tear burns his eyes but his body is out of water to waste on it, every muscle thudding dull pain while he leans heavily against the back of the driver’s seat.

Cullen has moved on. In all likelihood, the military will ask their questions, get no satisfaction, and put him to death. People snatched up and dragged away don’t come back. Sometimes they get _reassigned_ , or _transferred_ , or any number of other ways to say murdered without saying it, but they don’t come back.

In his mind, he sees Cullen smile in the harsh glow of a past afternoon, and Dorian presses his forehead to his battered knees.

There are two choices: stay, or keep going. Neither will bring him back, just like neither has ever brought anybody back, either in the godforsaken end of days or elsewhere across all of history.

So, he lifts his head. He’ll do what he’s always done. Keep going.

Go to Kelowna. Find Cassandra, if she’s there to be found. If he can even find Kelowna. This province is largely a mystery to him, and the passage of a day and night have dulled his memory of the map in Jasper. If he follows the highway signs, perhaps...

“Hold a moment...”

Rising to his feet he reaches for the glove compartment, unlatches it to dig through defunct insurance papers, a heap of pens, dried out hand sanitizer, a spare toothbrush. Something rattles under his touch, and he pauses to assess—prescription bottle. Ativan. With a pained laugh, he uncaps it and plants one under his tongue before stuffing the bottle in his pack. Cold comfort, he thinks, but he’ll take it. He keeps digging and—

“Ah!” He’s unearthed a faded, frayed map, stained with coffee, practically disintegrating. He unfolds it to spread across the dash and near tears it in half in the process.

It’s of Ontario. “Oh for _fuck’s_ sake.”

Traveling blind, then. If he can follow the big highways, he trusts they’ll lead him somewhere eventually. Maybe even to...

Hope flickers below his sternum, the steady thrum of _maybe he’ll make it, maybe this will be fine._ Were it possible to reach a hand down his own throat to choke the feeling, he’d do it. He settles for digging his fingers into the center of his chest, pressing in a painful circle. Hope is pointless, as futile as treating a gut shot with prayer. Cullen is gone.

His things, however, are not. He hefts and shoulders Cullen’s pack, realizing for the first time how much heavier it is than his own. “Idiot,” he mutters, wiping at his runny nose with the back of his wrist. They were meant to share the load. Self-sacrifice is a personal choice but he believes there’s nothing noble about needless suffering, no matter how quietly someone bears it. If he ever sees Cullen again— _you’ll never see him again_ —he vows to take him to task for it. He shoulders his own bag as well, and steps down from the truck.

The Rockies crowd the horizon at his back, guaranteeing miles of country left to cover to reach the interior of the province. Whether or not he’s got enough fuel, he isn’t sure. He’ll pause in the next town and see what there is to find.

Slowly, he stumbles to the spot where Cullen last stood, gravel disturbed by the altercation, and scans for the metallic flash of the Jeep key on the ground. It takes him a few minutes, but he spots it, and picks it up with stiff, numb fingers.

Cullen has gone. It’s time for him to go, too.

Buzzard follows him to the Jeep, bewildered and half searching.

“It’s okay,” he tells the dog, inviting him to sit shotgun. “Come on. Up.” Reluctant, Buzzard leaps in. Still he searches: eyes keen, ears pointed, nose working. Dorian closes the door and climbs into the driver’s seat, puts it in first, begins urging the Jeep back up the hill to the road.

_Bad luck._ For a moment, he hears the words in Felix’s voice. How he’d soften each letter, speak the saying like a talisman to protect them from blame when faced with horrors beyond their control. _There’s nothing you could’ve done, Dorian_.

He turns on the stereo, to drown out the phantoms.

For miles the highway follows the river, eventually veering across it, the span of the bridge deck solid beneath the tires. Progress is slow, since rockslides and other debris have piled up on the road over the course of years, but major blockages—fallen trees, larger boulders—have been cleared. Sure signs of an ongoing military presence. Hit by sudden, ugly knowing, Dorian realizes this route connects with the zone back in Calgary. They traveled hundreds of kilometers in a useless loop to avoid the military, only to be sent back practically the way they came for Cullen to meet his demise. He can’t help but laugh, sick with utter helplessness. _Just drive._

In the next town, he steers them into a suburb to find a suitable garage to hide the car while he searches for gas. Grief snatched most of the day from him. Foraging for the means to continue snatches the rest. The suburb is quite vacant, of both threats and supplies, and he sits down on the front porch of the house he’s chosen for the night to rest.

Grass bordering the walkway shivers in a rush of chill wind, and gooseflesh erupts down his forearms. A butterfly with black and orange wings whirls in a wide circle, chasing its shadow, flapping down until it meets it then flitting off into the trees.

Buzzard continues to search. He circles the neighbourhood, sticking his nose through every open doorway.

How long, to forget? Or will a particular smell, particles of woodsmoke, some chemical in another man’s scent, send the dog’s ears up and perk his tail, fool him into believing the empty space is filled again? Eventually, he returns to Dorian’s side, subdued, to lay his head on his paws and wait, as he has no doubt waited before.

He never did ask Cullen how he got the dog. “You won’t tell me, will you?” he says to Buzzard, stroking over his ribs. The dog rolls on his side, sticking a leg out to invite a belly scratch, which Dorian provides. This is the moment in which he understands that Buzzard is his now.

Like the dog, he half expects Cullen to walk up the road any minute, the difference between them being that Dorian knows, with certainty so profound it constricts his heart, that he won’t.

After a slow exhale, a last look at the mountains, he wipes his face and stands up. Inside, he stacks blockades in the fading light of dusk.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More Felix/Dorian mentions here, and grieving.

He only dreams of the dead. It’s been that way his whole life, and for that reason he believes his parents, far away as they are, might still be alive. His dreams are lucid, whole as waking, but with a peculiar quality of light—similar to the uncertain blur of old photographs. Softened sepia edges implying a reality less solid than the present, as if mutable in spite having already come to pass.

In his dream, he stands side by side with Felix near the balcony doors of their apartment. They’re watching snow fall on a cheery winter’s evening. Dorian, brought out of time to this place, can’t pretend at being of the moment. He feels himself crumpling, draws into Felix, every sense rushing to pull in a scent that no longer exists. Felix holds him, bigger this way than he ever was in life. They converse, or at least Felix converses, chatting as though Dorian were holding up his end of it, the meaning clear in spite of the words going unheard in that odd way of dreams.

Sparked neural pathways fill in the gaps. He knew this man, this apartment, knew how their furniture creaked and just how to kiss him if he wanted him to leave his grading and come to bed.

_I can’t seem to find my glasses_ , Felix says.

Dorian remembers that, too. The ongoing saga of the misplaced spectacles. Felix would forget, and Dorian would scoop them up, keep them safe until prompted.

This time, he doesn’t know where they are. He begins to cry. _I’m so sorry, love,_ he murmurs into his neck, near a mole just under where stubble tapers out. _I don’t know, I’ve lost them_.

In his arms, Felix laughs, not unkindly. _It’s not your fault, Dorian._

But it is. This time, and every other time, he should’ve done more. It’s too late to—

Gunshots. He startles awake to find his face wet with tears. One more shot fires, down the road quite a long way, but still too close for comfort. Buzzard rises from his resting place against Dorian’s legs and paces the narrow breadth of the office they’re shut up in, panting.

They ought to leave right away. Dorian begins to get up, but finds himself chill and heavy with the weight of ghosts. More tears boil out of his eyes and he swallows a whimper, but it makes a sound in his throat and that’s the end. Wracking sobs knock the air out of him, and he curls in on himself, gripping his head.

Huffing breath and a long, raspy tongue moisten the side of his face, followed by the jab of a cold, wet nose. He chokes out a small laugh, unfolds just enough to hold the dog off so he can lean into his ruff and escape the licking.

Buzzard is looking out for him. A dog’s love is perhaps not so simple as some would believe, but Buzzard trusts him. He’s an intelligent animal and he understands distress, grasps that Dorian is in need of comfort and that Cullen has left them, though he does not grasp why. He wants to help, evidenced by his stinky dog-breath efforts at support. Dorian leans on him and Buzzard lets him. It’s enough.

If nothing else, he must get this animal somewhere he will be looked after. Once he sees to that, he’ll be free to walk face first into oblivion, however he sees fit. There’s no shortage of ways to knock on death’s door.

“Time to go,” he whispers into the dog’s fur. It’s barely sunrise. They’ll leave town, get clear of any and all gunfire, and then he’ll find somewhere to install them and make some breakfast.

Onward. Forward momentum dulls the acute sear of loss. As long as he’s moving, his focus is external, flying sure as an arrow to assess the road ahead, always with an intermittent watch on the fuel gauge. Everywhere there are signposts of a lost world. Artifacts in the form of rotting advertisements for RVs, cabins, water parks, motels, fast food restaurants. All of it gone.

Ahead of him, the gray ribbon of crumbling road. In his mind, fleeting images of sunlight catching in ash blond curls. Some older memory ignites, as if lit by the same glow, to reveal Felix standing in his underwear in their kitchen, making toast.

Dorian’s fingers tighten around the steering wheel, and he swallows. Everything goes, all of it goes.

Almost. Love stays. Bleeds you dry, day after day. To keep from crying he reaches over to ruffle Buzzard’s ears.

A few klicks out from Sicamous he pulls over to refill the tank. That leaves him three empty gas cans and one full one. In the small neighbourhood he pries open a garage door to reveal a truck so brand new the red paint is still glossy. Dorian clicks his tongue. “Bet you they drove it off the lot the day before the world ended,” he says to the dog. “What a piss off.”

Buzzard simply wags his tail at being spoken to.

The gas from the shiny pickup fills one of his empties, and then a little of another one. He hefts the two containers back into the Jeep, and pauses to stretch out a stiff shoulder. He’s covered in bruises from his fall yesterday morning, humming with aches and pains. His left wrist has a nagging catch in it, and he works the tendons under his fingertips hoping to loosen them. Inertia solidifies in his core, a pebble, then a rain of them, one memory cascading into another. Cold starlight and hot breath, blunt nails grazing his nape.

He should have followed, or at least tried. Should’ve done something, anything—

“Fuck...” Eyes squeezed shut, he paces the garage twice to keep himself moving. This isn’t the place to mourn. He must get to where they were going. _Cullen might be there_. The thought forms before he can wrench it off at the stem. Even though he knows better, he gives that unfurling hope room to breathe. It may be false, but quashing it consumes double the energy of letting the roots take hold.

Back on the road they arrive to a juncture where the highway splits, one route east, one south. Dorian fights to remember Cullen’s finger tracing towns on the map, naming them. He rubs at his eyes and curses himself for not paying closer attention. In Jasper, he’d been living on the assumption that whatever befell them would befall them both. Stupid. He was stupid for not knowing better.

“To hell with it.” He turns the wheel and goes south. If he’s made a mistake, then...when the gas is gone, he’ll get out and walk.

The landscape greens and softens, welcoming them. River basin farmland. There are willow trees lining the banks and the scenery lulls his sore head. Incredible, how soothing he finds the mere promise of water. Unfortunately, there are likely infected here, too. He’s lulled, but not off his guard. Denser population, these hamlets scattered throughout the valley... He’ll have to be more careful than he was in the empty plains the last time he was alone.

When he spots a red barn in the distance, he can’t help but take it as a sign. He pulls off the main road and cautiously, quietly, searches the property, scrounging for the makings of lunch. Buzzard does the same, hunting rats near the old grain silo.

Later, just shy of somewhere called Vernon, the Jeep starts making uneven thumping noises. The handling feels off, so he rolls to a stop to assess. A glance at the driver’s side reveals nothing, so he circles to the passenger side, where one of the tires is slowly but surely leaking air.

“Ah, shit.” He’s too numb for panic. As he crouches to inspect the damage, all he feels is a grim sort of acceptance. Now that he thinks about it, he’s surprised it didn’t happen sooner.

The trademark rear-mounted tire is long gone, probably put to use years ago. Besides that, he’s never changed a tire in his life and isn’t sure he could manage by himself, anyhow.

“You wouldn’t happen to have a spare on you, would you?” he says to Buzzard. The dog licks his own nose, wags his tail.

Judging by the uptick in roadside homes, they’re very close to a larger town. If there’s an automotive shop somewhere that hasn’t been picked over, then there’s a chance of...something.

He inhales a deep breath, hauls his pack up onto the driver’s seat to take stock. There’s the crowbar, and Cullen’s revolver, plus a box of ammunition. The rifle and bow are too cumbersome, and he’s no marksman. What he does have is two glass bottles full of flammable liquid, carefully packed in rags, ready to be transformed into Molotov cocktails at a moment’s notice. He’s always been good with fire, though one glance at Buzzard reminds him that flames should be a last resort. God help him if he accidentally burned up the dog. He’d never forgive himself.

The straps on his pack need tightening, so he does that. Then, he reaches for the crowbar three times to assure himself the motion of pulling it free will be smooth. They start walking.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Plenty of canon typical violence in this one, and a tiny bit of gore?

Vernon, as it turns out, is not the backwater he expected, so much so that he’s forced to rethink their approach. Too high a chance there are other survivors here, or worse. Instead of wandering the shoulder of the highway they climb a ways up into the fields and yards above it, for the shade and the cover. It’s slow going. More than once Buzzard’s hackles rise and Dorian follows his lead, skirting certain buildings.

Car dealerships line the highway outside of town, but each showroom is emptier than the last, every viable vehicle either taken or stripped for parts. Dust coats the interiors of the buildings, small plants springing up from heaped dirt blown in by storms. Nature has invited herself in and settled comfortably, since nobody’s left to deny her.

In the distance, he can make out the dull beige walls of several big stores and strip malls.

“How about a wager?” He looks to Buzzard. “I bet there are at least, mm, five of the same donut place in this town.” Doesn’t get much more Canadian than the hallmark red cursive name, and he can already see at least one location adjacent the highway. He offers a hand and Buzzard holds out his paw, and they shake. Not that the dog actually knows or cares what he’s talking about. 

Wandering a bit further, he thinks he might hear generators on the east side of the city, so they veer west, following along a road of empty mechanic’s shops and chain restaurants. Finally, they slither their way through a gap in a barricade to gain access to a hardware megastore parking lot. He’s about to see about making their way inside when he notices the sign in the next lot over is for an actual tire shop.

“There we go.” Fingers crossed, then.

The retail floor has been ransacked, but in the garage he finds several banks of shelves that altogether contain two sets of tires that look like the rubber might hold air. He’s about to grapple one down to examine more closely when realization rises on a flood of bile in his throat. There’s no guarantee any of these goddamn tires will be the right fit, even if he could roll all of them the ten kilometers back to the Jeep. He should’ve accounted for this. The shame of his error creeps hot across his face, sinks way down in his guts, and he has to sit for a few minutes to wrap his head around it.

Buzzard is bored, inured to Dorian’s defeat. He snuffs about the shop, sticking his head here and there, finally knocking a box of tools off a countertop and startling himself enough that he retreats to Dorian for reassurance.

“We’re both idiots, it seems,” he mutters as he gives the dog a pat. He hoists himself to his feet to inspect the fresh mess.

Bits of rubber, a few pointed T-handled screwdriver sort of things, sets of pliers, and an instruction booklet. He picks that up. “Puncture repair procedure manual...”

Of course. Of fucking course, maybe he can patch the tire. He flips through, examining the photographs, and gathers up the pictured tools, the repair strips. He’ll still have to find a way to take the damned wheel off the car, and a way to reinflate it, but he’ll deal with those challenges one at a time. Depending on how successful he is searching for an air pump, they may be able to trek back to the Jeep before dark.

A rolling boom rattles the walls of the building and he bumps against a table edge to steady himself. Buzzard barks twice in alarm. “Jesus...” Definitely not thunder. He creeps through the retail area and climbs the staff stairs to the roof, where he can see an enormous cloud of smoke billowing into the late afternoon sky from the buildings only a couple roads over.

“That can’t be good.”

There’s a break room, and he closes them in there to hunker down. They’ll be too exposed crossing the highway now, and there’s no way to know what they’re dealing with. 

At least he feels afraid. That, he tells himself, is a good sign.

Day leaves, evening dims to night. No further activity since the explosion. Eventually, Buzzard scratches at the door, whining. Probably needs a pee. He does too, if he’s honest. A brief foray outside, then.

All quiet. Might as well head for the car while darkness provides cover.

“You wait for me,” he says to the dog, who takes off ahead as always. Flattening himself out, Dorian slides into the parking lot next door. At some point, someone fortified the property, employing eighteen-wheelers and shipping containers to surround much of it. Clever, but perhaps not as effective as they’d hoped, given that it stands empty now.

Buzzard lopes near the entrance, then freezes, staring through one of the darkened doors. Dorian goes still, watches the dog’s hackles sharpen, slowly reaches to take hold of his crowbar in readiness.

The dog growls, deep and in earnest. Ugly, low snarling rendering him unrecognizable. From the depths of the doorway come a slew of high pitched rasping squeals, and a pack of clickers charges into the lot straight at Buzzard.

The dog bolts. Dorian releases the crowbar and yanks out the revolver instead, searching frantically for a way up onto the fortifications. Nothing immediate, but further along the side of the building there’s a dumpster. He sprints toward it, clambers up, up again, onto the top of a shipping container. Three more clickers materialize from behind the building, stumbling over one another to make their way to where he stood only seconds before.

Too many. This is too many. As soon as he fires they’ll come straight at him. A long time ago he made the mistake of thinking they couldn’t climb and it’s an error he won’t repeat.

But he can’t call the dog, either. Buzzard is barking and barking, out of sight in front of the store. Then, in a flurry of scrambling paws he flies around the corner with flattened ears and a low tail to wedge himself through the half jammed door of a decrepit pre-built wooden shed. The clickers go after him instantly.

“Oh, no,” Dorian breathes. That cover won’t hold. He lifts his crowbar and flings it at an unbroken car window, shattering the glass. In a surge, a few infected leave off the shed and swarm toward the sound. He scrambles in his backpack for one of the liquor bottles, lights a match, holds his breath until the pack convenes.

He hefts the Molotov, draws back, lets fly. Fire soars through the dark, smashing at the feet of three tinder dry clickers who ignite, shrieking while they collapse like kicked sandcastles, graying to ash. Several more spill toward the ensuing ruckus, and one of them stands in the licking flames, insensate to its own charring flesh for a few moments before coming to a screaming standstill as it burns.

Buzzard is still trapped, barking, several infected battering the boards, relentless in their efforts to rip him apart. 

Dorian leaps down onto the hood of a car, looking up only long enough to assure himself the noise has drawn the clickers. As silently as he can, he crouches and moves with agonizing slowness toward a nearby van, where he hauls himself on top. The clickers flock to investigate the hood of the car, and he lights another Molotov, arcs it into the midst of them. Anguished, inhuman howls as they’re consumed by the flames.

“Fucking die,” Dorian spits as he drops to the ground. He snatches up his crowbar from where it fell and dashes to Buzzard, freeing the dog with a great wrenching crash, near prying the door off its hinges. They sprint away toward the parking lot exit, the smell of smoke thick behind them. 

Adrenaline scorches his throat as he churns his limbs, readying to hurdle a makeshift fence blocking entry to the fields across the road. Buzzard sails overtop of it ahead of him, and he reaches out and begins to vault. His hip wrenches as an overwhelming force locks around his calf, brings him sprawling to the pavement where he cracks his cheek hard enough to stun him. Desperate, he fights to scrabble forward, slip under the fence if he can’t get over it. The grip takes hold, dragging him back. He kicks out with a heel, hears the crunch of soft bone and rolls over to see he’s dislodged the lower half of a clicker’s jaw. Undeterred, it gurgles and grabs for him again. His crowbar is out of reach, flung aside when he was knocked into the dirt.

A vicious snarl fills his ears and in a blink, seventy pounds of furious dog collide with the clicker, sending it to the ground. Dorian staggers to his feet and grabs the crowbar, swings heavy and smashes what’s left of the thing’s head, splattering it across the asphalt. 

He licks to check his teeth, then spits. Tastes blood. “Let’s go,” he hisses to Buzzard. They leap over the fence in tandem. Behind them, two more clickers creak into the open, ready to follow.

Pulling his lip into a grimace he wills himself to run faster. Across the field. Keep going. 

Automatic gunfire rips through the air and he stumbles, falls briefly to his knees, lurches to regain his footing and keeps running. An engine revs somewhere behind him and a moment later headlights cut the night, blinding him and stopping him cold. Buzzard stops too, lurking somewhere out of the beams.

Bulky silhouettes block the stream of light.

“Drop the weapon,” a woman growls.

Dorian stows it in its loop instead, and raises both hands. “Please,” he gasps. It’s all he has the energy to say.

“Check him,” she orders the figure on her left.

The blood test is a little nip, and moments later it’s throwing a negative. “Could be too soon?” the guy says.

“Maybe. Bring him with us. Quarantine overnight. Move out.”

Someone takes hold of him and ushers him to the Humvee. “The dog,” he says, struggling feebly. “I won’t leave my dog!”

The soldier looks once again to the towering woman.

She sighs. “Bring the goddamn dog.”

Someone, somehow, gets hold of a whining Buzzard, and they’re both loaded into the back of the vehicle behind a tarp that separates them from the other passengers.

Time gets funny on him, along the road. He’s aware of the engine, of forward motion, and then he realizes he’s on his feet, being walked into a room dimly lit by a single tiny LED. Someone asks him where he came from, where the rest of his group is, but he cannot find words to answer. He can’t be sure if minutes or hours have passed. The door locks behind him when the soldier leaves, and he doesn’t question it. There’s a cot in the corner. He collapses face down, Buzzard settling under his hand on the floor next to him.

His dreams taste of smoke, but Cullen isn’t in them. Only Felix, smiling, wearing his glasses this time, the exact rhythm and gesture of how he used to adjust them playing as if captured on film.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit more sad stuff and mentions of violence that has already happened? Mention of Adaar/Sera, also.

He’s woken by a knock. Somebody in a hazmat suit opens the door and hands him a tray of food, then sets a bowl of chow on the floor for the dog, and closes the door again.

In the corner, he sees two bottles of water and metal bowl full of it. They’ve also left him his backpack, minus weapons. He rifles through his things and steadily remembers that most of his belongings remain in the Jeep, including the paperback he’s been reading since the ranch house.

A while later, the hazmat suited man returns, this time to administer blood tests on both him and Buzzard. They come up negative. “Well,” he says, pulling his mask off and the hood of the suit down. “You’re both clean, but I’ve got to get word from the boss before we let you out.”

Dorian nods.

“Might’ve needed a stitch in that cheek, too,” the man adds. “Bit late now.”

He goes. The next time he comes back he’s out of the suit, and he has a basin of warm water, a cloth, and bandages. His reddish blond hair is tied back, and there’s a Firefly tag around his slender neck.

Dorian nods at it, once the fellow settles on a chair in front of him. “You’re Fireflies, then?”

“Some of us,” he replies. “Hold still. I’m Anders, by the way.”

“Dorian. And that’s Buzzard,” he nods at the dog, who stays curled on his blanket on the floor. Exhausted by their brush with death, undoubtedly.

Wounds tended, they’re set loose from the quarantine room. A few steps into the hallway he recognizes that the building they’re in is a heavily fortified hospital.

“Adaar will want to speak to you.” Anders gestures for him to follow, so he does.

Three soldiers idle around what was once a nurse’s station, and they stand aside to reveal a seated woman with long black hair braided off to one side. She stands when she spots Dorian, towering over all of them by a solid four inches or more.

“There’s our survivor,” she says. In a motion, she tosses him a flash of silver, and he catches it. His own ID tags. “Hope those are really yours.”

Blinking, he nods. “They are.” Poor show not to notice that those were missing from his pack, though after a point you got used to things slipping away unexplained. “Thank you for not killing me outright.”

“Ha!” It’s a loud laugh, and warm. She reaches to clap him on the shoulder. “We’ve been working our way through the city, eradicating nests. Couldn’t shoot someone who’d just done half a day’s work for us. Though,” she pauses, looking hard at him, “we were surprised it was only you.”

He stands up a little straighter, at that. “I’m a one man demolition squad, given the right incendiaries.”

This makes her smile. “Just the kind of guy we need around here.”

Comforting banter, though he hasn’t failed to notice that a fellow with a dark, heavy beard is keeping a close eye on him, as is an elfin looking blond. If he steps out of line, they’ll be on him in an instant. They’re extending some trust, yes, but also counting on the fact that he’s far too tired to give them much of a fight.

Quick burning hope flares through his chest, all in a moment. “May I ask, have you... Have you picked up any other stragglers, in the past two days?”

Adaar’s brow twitches, the flick of her eyes indicating unpleasant memories. “Nobody we could help. You lose someone out there?”

Like that, the flame smothers. They aren’t the same crew that took Cullen, or they’re lying. From how he’s been treated so far, he doubts they’re lying. He crosses his arms over his chest, clears his throat to firm his voice. “Just wondered.”

She moves behind the counter of the nursing station to pick up a mug. Tea, by the look of it. “So, what brings you to the area?” By her stance, there is a wrong way to answer the question.

Suddenly, a ping of clarity ripples through his gray matter—Adaar might be a last name. “I’m looking for Cassandra,” he says.

Several of them glance at one another. Finally, Adaar replies, “She’s not here. Not this week, anyway.”

So much for that. One more gamble. “I’d heard she was in Kelowna.”

Following a few long moments of crisp silence, Adaar sets her tea down. “Where’d you hear that?”

“A friend of hers. Another Firefly.”

Slowly, she nods. He’s passed, it seems. “Yeah, she’s there. We’re heading down in a day or two to resupply, if you want to come with us.”

Buzzard walks over to the elfin looking woman, wagging his tail, and her face softens as she lowers a hand for the dog to sniff. He wags his tail more enthusiastically, turning to insist on a pat to the withers, which she gives him.

“I’d appreciate it,” Dorian says.

From there, Anders shows him the rest of their set up. Solar panels and battery packs, with one or two generators for backup or heavy draw items. Someone has managed to get a decontamination shower working in the area they refer to as the guardroom, though hot water is at a premium. Outside, they’ve reclaimed a nearby park for a small garden, which they tour serenaded by the clucking of a group of hens. In a second enclosure, several goats frisk to the gate on spindly legs.

“Behind,” someone calls out, and they move aside. The young woman who patted Buzzard bustles past carrying two hefty bundles of grazing.

“Sera is our resident goat whisperer,” Anders explains. “She brought most of them in for us.” They watch her enter the paddock and greet the creatures, who seem fond of her beyond the fact that her arms are full of their lunch.

Overall, it’s a light operation—satellite to the one in Kelowna, he’s informed—meticulously run by a blended group of military personnel and civilians who have chosen to cooperate for the sake of bettering their long-term chances.

His tour completed, Dorian tells Adaar about the Jeep. Good faith, show of trust, waste not, etcetera. They take a humvee and a few of her people out to retrieve it. Fortunately, it’s still there, untouched. The fellow with the bushy beard gets a fresh tire on it, though they hold on to the old one for patching. When they arrive back to the hospital, Dorian tries to foist good fortune on Adaar by holding the key out to her. Instead of gratitude, he meets with refusal.

“It got you this far,” she says with a shrug. “It stays with you. You’ll follow the convoy down, when we go.”

It would be impolite to tell her he’s hardly that sentimental, so he simply thanks her. She commands a certain respect, though her good humor blunts the sharpest edges.

In the afternoon he sets out on perimeter patrol with the surly bearded gentleman, who finally introduces himself as Rainier. They don’t talk much, which suits Dorian fine.

Dinner is a rotating chore, and being new he’s absorbed into the bustle of preparation. Soup—easy to water down to make it go further—and some venison. Off duty evenings are passed in the mess hall with old board games and cards, one wall for darts. Sera and Adaar sit together, laughing raucously and then privately to one another in turns, Adaar’s honed arm looped about Sera’s waist.

Dorian sits away from the main tables with the dog at his feet, enjoying the company of others from a distance. He’s not feeling charming or personable yet. Right now, he believes he won’t ever be again, though he already knows that isn’t true. When the sun goes down, he climbs the stairs to a room on one of the upper floors, assigned to him ostensibly for his own privacy. Considering that the stairwells are all blocked but the one with two posted guards, he sees the fib for what it is but doesn’t begrudge them the precaution. They’ve been hospitable beyond all expectation, even going so far as to leave him a clean change of clothes, and he can’t blame people for wanting to contain an unknown. On the bed he settles in, calm enough to notice that the cut on his cheek itches. His collection of bruises, fully formed deep purple webs and nebulae across his trunk and limbs, throb each time his heart pumps. He’s restless, sick with the low simmer of grief.

Thoughts of Cullen bubble up. The first time he saw him naked, standing in a lake in the middle of the woods. The first time they touched one another. A careful, stuttering thing, fumbling in the dim light of evening at the ranch house in the middle of the acreage, Cullen’s wound still raw and staining his bandages pink. That was only a few days ago, and now…

When he falls asleep, he expects to dream of him. He doesn’t dream at all.

Before dawn he descends the stairwell, greeting the guards then wandering to the hotplate in the nurse’s station, where he makes himself a cup of tea—dreadful stale stuff, but still tea. Adaar appears a while later, fully dressed in her uniform. She may or may not have slept.

“Good morning,” she says, mid way through a yawn. She opens a packet of soda crackers and jams one in her mouth. Then, she indicates the main hallway. “Wanna see what the cat dragged in?”

Curious as to what she’s referring to, he follows her down the hallway with slight trepidation. They arrive to a room that overlooks the metal intake gates, and he registers the rumbling of an engine outside in the dark. Adaar opens a radio channel. “ID,” she says, then chomps into another cracker.

“RMRCC dash two,” a voice replies. “Open the fuck up.”

Adaar rolls her eyes, then descends the stairs into a lower office, where a guard gives her a curt nod.

Behind her, Dorian asks, “What’s happening?”

“Kamloops military,” she explains. “Drop off, for tomorrow’s supply run. Basically, they bring us tech, and we clean up their messes.” She plugs a cord into a generator and presses a button. A buzzer sounds.

The metal gates swing wide, and the truck pulls through while the guard keys open the door to the bay, greeting the driver with a wave. Another pair of soldiers drop from the back of the vehicle and begin unloading bins. There looks to be a new generator, a box of light bulbs, rations, some ammunition, and several mystery cases with closed lids. The action pauses for a moment, delivery apparently complete. Then one of the men snaps a word at another, and a brief, curt exchange takes place between the two. Cowed, the lower ranking soldier hops back into the vehicle and hauls out a disheveled, handcuffed person blindfolded with a red kerchief.

Adaar makes a noise, somewhere between disgust and irritation. “Speaking of messes...”

One of the soldiers roughly removes the prisoner’s cuffs and shoves the kerchief down around his neck. The prisoner is faced away, blood staining the right side of his t-shirt. Dorian’s heart beats double. He loses his breath.

“Let me in.”

Adaar gives him a look. “What, you know this guy?”

“Let me in. Please, open the door!”

She shrugs, knocks on the window in warning, then unlocks the door and steps aside, holding it open.

Dorian rushes through. He grips the man by the shoulders and turns him forcibly.

A contusion the size and shape of a purple onion splits his left brow and his eye is swollen shut, face crusted with blood. But it’s him. “Cullen...?”

The expression on Cullen’s bashed face goes from blank to shattered. Tears well and spill from his one good eye before he can bury the unbruised half of his forehead against Dorian’s neck. The backs of his ribs where Dorian grips him twitch with a quiet sob, and he pulls him closer, careful not to squeeze hard for fear there are other bruises.

Cullen tries to speak, but it’s half garbled by saliva and his first few words wet Dorian’s collarbone, indecipherable. “Dorian,” he eventually manages, his voice rough. “I didn’t—I didn’t know where—” The sentence stalls, unfinished, and he cries, his fingers snarled in Dorian’s t-shirt.

“Shh, shh, it’s alright.” Dorian begins to step them away from the soldiers, ignoring their sneering. “It’s alright, you come with me now.” His own tears roll down his cheeks every time he blinks, but he refuses to hold still or allow his brows to crumple. “Does he have to be quarantined?” he asks Adaar, who stands in the doorway under a shadow of heavy gloom.

She throws her glance past Dorian, at the soldiers. “I assume he’s fine?”

One of them nods.

“No. No quarantine.” She wrestles with her keys, pulls one off the ring to hand to him. “Take him to the guardroom and get him cleaned up.” She touches Dorian on the shoulder and slips past him, toward the trio of Kamloops men. Not one of them is near as tall as she is. “What did I say about beating the living shit out of civilians? And _don’t_ fucking tell me you found him like that,” she growls behind them as the door slams shut.

“B…Buzzard?” Cullen squeaks.

“He’s around, don’t you worry. I took good care of him.”

That makes him cry harder, but it’s a relieved sort of sob instead of a desperate one. Dorian leads him through the halls to the guardroom, where he sets him down on a bench to take a better look at his head.

“What have they done to you,” he hushes, feeling bile and fire rise up in his gut.

“Didn’t like my road trip story,” Cullen says with a sad laugh. “Not very believable.” His lip quivers, and he reaches for Dorian, pressing his face into his belly and clinging to the backs of his legs. “Didn’t think my tags were mine, either…”

Dorian strokes his filthy hair, finds another tender, bloody split in his scalp in the process. “The eye, is it...”

“Still in my head,” Cullen says. “Just—Just sore.”

Given his injuries it’s a wonder he’s up walking and talking. “I was certain they’d kill you.”

“They were going to, but... I told them Cassandra had sent for me. That I was expected. They pitched me in the back of a truck hours ago, and now...”

Dorian helps him to his feet. “Let’s get you fixed up,” he whispers.

He unties the dirty kerchief, helps Cullen out of his t-shirt to reveal mottled welts on his chest and back, a painter’s palette of sickening colors on the skin around his wound. When they bludgeoned him that day on the road his scab split, and it’s re-healed unevenly. The scar will be twice as ugly for it. Without dwelling on his own clenched heart, he eases Cullen out of the rest of his clothes.

It takes a bit of doing, to be gentle and avoid all his bruises, but they get him scrubbed, patched, and into some clean sweats and a cast off hoodie. The moment he’s dressed, there’s a great scratching at the door, followed by an indignant bark.

Dorian barely manages to turn the handle before a Buzzard shaped rocket launches inside, practically folding in half he’s wagging his tail so hard. He turns great circles in front of Cullen, claws skittering, whining and whining, licking his face and hands for ten minutes solid. Cullen spends the whole time ruffling the dog’s fur, murmuring comforts and greetings as he weeps openly.

Not that Dorian blames him, since he’s weeping openly, too.

Once the dog has calmed they make their way to the mess, where Dorian warms a bowl of soup leftover from the previous night, grabs a single serving packet of crackers out of the cupboard, and sets everything in front of Cullen.

For a moment, Cullen stares down into the bowl. “What’s this?”

“Corn chowder.”

“With... With milk?”

Dorian runs a hand gently along Cullen’s spine, careful not to put pressure anywhere he remembers there being a mark. “They’ve got a few goats.”

Incredulous, Cullen lifts the spoon to his lips and blows on it, levers it into his mouth. A second later, he sets it in the bowl again, his fingers knitting together between his knees.

“Too hot?” Dorian asks, rubbing at the divot in the small of his back.

He shakes his head. Wipes his nose and his swollen eye, carefully, with a sleeve. “Feel like I’m dreaming,” he whispers, another shaky tear streaking down his face. “Can’t...Can’t believe any of this is real.”

Dorian leaves a hand on his back and leans past him, helps himself to a spoonful of soup. “Mm,” he thumbs a drop from the corner of his lip then sucks the fingertip clean, “tastes real enough.” He touches his nose to the side of Cullen’s neck and holds there a few moments, wraps both arms around him, softly. His ribs push into Dorian’s forearm, rising with an inhale, falling, the thud of his heart resonating through bone. Minutes pass. Finally, Dorian asks, “Do I have to feed it to you? I will, you know. Don’t test me.”

The ribs under his arm compress with breathy laughter. Cullen wipes his eye again. He picks up the spoon, and eats.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a bit of an epilogue, in its way. No real warnings this time. Thank you so much for reading and for your kind comments and patience along the way, hopefully you enjoyed this weird little story <3

Cornfields. The side of the road is lined with cornfields, contained behind miles of high fences.

“Look at that,” Cullen murmurs from the passenger seat. He’s kept the red bandana, sports it neatly tied about the neck in an effort at Old Hollywood cowboy cool. At least, that’s what Dorian accused him of when he put it on, right before he kissed him and admitted he liked it. A poor stand-in for the lost Stetson, but it suits.

The convoy rolled out around dawn. Two Humvees, one of them converted for biodiesel, and the Jeep kiting behind like an eager younger sibling.

Cullen slept most of yesterday, kept company by both Dorian and the dog. Every couple hours Dorian gave him a gentle shake, woke him, reminded him where he was and that they were safe. Best to take precautions against concussion, though precautions were about the only available treatment anyway. Adaar came up to check on them in the evening, and when Dorian tried to return her spare guardroom key she told him to hang on to it, at least until they made it to Kelowna.

Trust, good faith, etcetera.

In the morning, they packed up what was theirs to take, loaded the Jeep, and after a brief rundown of emergency strategies found themselves once again on the highway.

Now, a mere fifty odd kilometers later, they gaze out at shimmering seas of corn, ripples of silken green stalks fluttering on the breeze.

Past the city proper, in the rural outskirts, great stone walls rise out of the landscape looking for all the world like a quarantine zone. From somewhere beyond them thin tendrils of gray smoke wisp into the sky. The head Humvee’s tail lights glow red as it slows, then stops. The second vehicle pulls alongside it.

In the passenger seat Cullen reaches for his rifle to check it over. “Don’t like the look of that,” he mutters, nodding at the smoke. He digs a spare handful of cartridges out of his pack and pockets them. If they have to turn around and run there’s enough gas for them to go back to Vernon, but not much farther.

Dorian pulls the Jeep in line with the other two cars and Cullen rolls down his window.

Next to them, Adaar does the same. “Something’s wrong,” she says. “We’ll assess as we go, follow our lead. Be ready.”

The vehicles resume formation, traveling in the shadow of the concrete wall with deliberate slowness. A few minutes later they pull up to a gate and all three cars coast to a standstill. Adaar climbs out, radio in one hand, pistol in the other. She tries a frequency once, twice. There’s a guardhouse, but it’s vacant, and the watchtowers look empty, too.

Here, the smell of smoke thickens inside the lungs. Adaar delves back into her vehicle, emerges with what appears to be an orange hockey ball, and hurls it over the wall.

Another two minutes tick past. Movement flickers in the guardroom above. The gates clank, and with a groan of metal they swing aside. A short, stocky man gestures them in, and they park at the center of a wide courtyard as the gates close behind them.

“What happened?” Adaar asks as she leaves the Humvee.

“Infected came through the fence in the south quadrant,” replies the guard.

“Shit, we’ll get down there and—

He slowly shakes his head. “It’s all under control,” he insists, solid and reassuring. “Seeker’s got most of our people patrolling the grounds. Can’t be too careful.” He walks back to the gates, where he sets two additional heavy bars in place.

Across the courtyard a door opens to reveal an impeccably dressed woman with a box under one arm, advancing on them at a trot. Her clothes are old, but pressed and clean. What might’ve been called casual chic in the time before the world ended, which must mean that up until now this place was safe enough to allow her room to worry about such trifles.

“Ah, hello! I’m afraid we are a little behind schedule this morning,” she says.

“Looks like it was a good time for us to bring you some reinforcements,” Adaar murmurs, gesturing for Cullen and Dorian to come forward, Buzzard trailing at their heels. “Josephine, these two know Pentaghast. She ok?”

“Yes, she’s in the tower with Leliana. Things this morning were…not so good.” At her hip, the box moves. “Oh!” She holds it out to Adaar. “Hawke asks that you take these to Anders,” she says.

Adaar lifts the cardboard flap to reveal two kittens, both dark tabby, and she smiles wide before tucking the box closed again. “I will.”

Behind them someone says, “Wait a second.”

Everybody turns to look. The short guard, again. Realization has dawned across his broad face, and he’s staring hard at Cullen.

“Curly? Is that you under that shiner?”

“It may be,” Cullen replies.

“I’ll be damned!” Laughing, he extends his arm wide and pulls Cullen into a small bear hug, over before he can dodge or protest it. “We thought you were dead!”

“Not quite. Blessing or curse, I can’t decide.”

The man laughs again. “Cheerful as ever. Though I can see why you might be in a mood.” He gestures to the black eye.

“It’ll heal. It’s nice to see you too, Varric,” Cullen says. “Enjoying all the fresh mountain air?”

“Oh, you know me. Real outdoorsmen. Never happy unless I’m waist deep in foliage.”

Cullen grins, the scar pulling his lip. “Can’t say I recall that.”

“Well, you’re concussed,” Varric replies, waving one hand. “It’ll come back to you. I’d bet on it.”

“To be sure. That much I do remember.”

“Some things don’t change.”

Josephine clears her throat, which cues a wink from Varric before he begins to step away, still facing them. “Excuse me, duty calls. We’ll catch up later.” With that, he returns toward the guard tower.

Dorian watches the fellow go. “Old friend?”

“Old friend.” Cullen confirms, shaking his head and looking bemused. “Don’t play cards with him,” he adds hastily.

In time, the Humvees unload and begin their resupply. They stack crates of fruit and vegetables, the bulk of it box upon box of corn. He and Cullen lend a hand while they can but without knowing the rhythms of the crew they find themselves more underfoot than actively useful, so they take up a spot on the sidelines to watch the proceedings instead.

They’re efficient, and the work takes under five minutes. Adaar, having divested herself of the box of kittens, approaches them. “Josephine,” she points to the fashionable woman, “will take you to see Pentaghast now.” Then, her expression softens. “How’s your head?” This directed at Cullen.

He takes a moment to register he’s being addressed. “Oh, uh... I’ll—I’ll be fine, thank you.”

Adaar sets a solemn hand on his shoulder. “The RMR squad is old school army. Those assholes think every person left alive out here is gunning for them. Even if they _were_ , dragging off civilians is not what they’re fed and housed for. I’ll be taking measures to ensure they don’t do it again.”

Cullen blushes a soft salmon pink. “Th—Thank you,” he stutters. “It’s... These things happen.” He rubs at his nape, eyebrows pulled together in consternation.

Delighted by the show of bashfulness, Dorian gives him the gentlest of nudges in the ribs with the side of an elbow.

Josephine joins their circle, saving Cullen from further flustering. “If you’ve said your farewells, I shall take you to Cassandra?”

Adaar gives a strong nod, whacks Dorian on the arm, and begins to walk away. “Good luck.”

“To you, too,” Dorian calls after her.

They follow Josephine through the door she initially entered by, which opens out into a second large courtyard full of raised beds planted with zucchini and row upon row of tomatoes, their leaves yellowing as the season draws to a close. To their left, on the other side of a chain link fence, is another garden, and another beyond it, plus what looks like several greenhouses past that. The scale is confounding. “If I may ask,” Dorian says to their host, “what is this place?”

“Military agricultural compound. Abandoned, after it became obvious that maintaining supply lines to the major cities was going to be...” Josephine tilts her head, “difficult.”

Another master of understatement, it would seem. Dorian likes her already. “I judge it’s hard to keep secure?”

“It…has its challenges,” she says, still leading them onward. “Today is the first incident in many months. We take every precaution but as you know, that is not always enough.” She gives a soft, melancholy shrug. “Overall, we’re comfortable. Restoration was completed last year, and we’ve updated the solar grid. In fact,” she turns to grin over her shoulder, “as of spring, we even have indoor plumbing.”

Dorian stops dead in his tracks to process that particular tidbit. “This place is a godsend,” he mutters, catching up.

Several flights of stairs lead to what reminds him of an air traffic control tower, full of rooms plated with windows overlooking three hundred and sixty degrees of countryside. There are individual offices in the center, and a semi-circle of desks, but mostly the space is open and empty. Buzzard lopes along nearby, snuffling at baseboards.

Silhouetted in the frame of one of the windows stands a tall, stately woman, dark hair cropped close to her head. Her sharp features are focused on a second, shorter woman, wearing a hood. The two of them are holding sheets of paper.

“Do what you must. We cannot risk it,” the tall woman says.

With a nod, the other woman slips away.

“Sergeant Pentaghast? New arrivals, courtesy of Adaar,” Josephine announces, standing aside to reveal them.

So this must be Cassandra.

For a moment, her brows arch high, as though she’s seen a ghost. She sets the paper down on a desk and steps forward. “Cullen...?”

He raises a sleeve to dab at his swollen face. “Bit worse for wear,” he says softly.

In two swift strides she crosses the floor and takes hold of him, pulling him into an embrace. “We did not know what became of you after…” She shakes her head and stands back to look him up and down with an earnest glint of moisture in the corners of her eyes. “I suppose it does not matter. It is good to see you again.”

“You, too. This is all... Well, it’s hard to believe,” he says, staring out at the surrounding fields.

She directs her gaze toward the east pastures, the last of the rising smoke dissipating against a wall of cloud. “That’s because you have not yet seen how much work it is. I’m sure you’ve already heard, but just this morning we nearly lost everything.” Then, she turns and extends a hand toward Dorian. “And you are?”

“Dorian,” he replies. “Pavus.” Her handshake brings to mind the unflinching robustness of a boulder.

“We’ve been traveling together,” Cullen explains.

“Ah. And you’ve had some trouble along the way?”

Cullen’s fingers graze at his nape yet again. “Bit tough to steer clear of it, these days.”

“Even if you remain in one place, it comes to you,” she says bleakly, touching the edge of the desk. “But, now you are here. I hope you intend to stay for a time?”

“We do.”

“Excellent. It has not been easy. We are happy to have all the help we can get.” She moves back to her initial place in front of the pane of glass. “Later I will brief you on our operations, but for now I suspect both of you would like to rest. I will have Josephine arrange rooms for each of you.”

“Room,” Cullen says.

She and Dorian both turn to look at him.

He blinks, pink suffusing his freckled cheeks. His one good eye jumps to Dorian. The color in his face darkens from salmon to vibrant rose. “That is, unless you, ah—Unless you’d rather... Um. I’d thought...”

Dorian reaches for his hand, knitting their fingers together. “You thought right,” he says quietly, holding eye contact a few extra seconds to let him know just how right.

By the window, Cassandra’s scarred cheek pulls into a tiny smile. “Room, then.”

Josephine leads them from the tower to an adjoining building that contains a series of dormitories, where their room—a modest affair with a double bed and small seating space—overlooks fields grazed by a herd of presumably tame deer. The animals roam as normal, tails flicking, mouths working, unconcerned with whatever ill fate struck earlier in the day. Several soldiers patrol the borders of the compound, grim staccato figures along the wall. He’s astounded again by the sheer dedication of Cassandra’s people. To have built so successfully upon scraps and raw bones of infrastructure left by a long absent army... Remarkable.

They park the Jeep outside the dormitories in one of the empty spaces. Cullen suggests they offer it into communal use with the caveat that should they ever choose to leave, it goes with them. Those arrangements can be made later, so they carry their things back to the room.

On the stairs, climbing steadily behind Cullen, Dorian itches with the sense that he’s forgotten to say something. “Oh,” he remembers as they round the last flight, staring straight at the object of the matter. “Your fucking backpack!”

“My... What about my fucking backpack?” Cullen grumbles.

“It was a lot heavier than mine. It didn’t have to be, you know.”

Cullen pauses in the hallway outside their door. His one dark eye focuses hard on Dorian, silence elastic between them pinched to the verge of snapping. “I know,” he says finally, then lets himself in.

That’s about the reaction he expected. For today, he’ll let it lie. They settle their things in the dresser and cupboards and Dorian throws the window ajar, letting in a warm wash of air to chase out the stale dust of vacancy. Hints of smoke come in with the warmth, but he finds that preferable to mustiness. Cullen lowers himself onto the bed belly down, shoving a pillow away to rest the uninjured side of his face on the mattress. Dorian joins him but he’s restless, wide awake with curiosity. He eases out of bed after only twenty minutes and sets a palm on Cullen’s shoulder blade. “If you’re alright here, I’m going to have a bit of a look around.”

“M’alright,” Cullen mumbles, half asleep.

So, Dorian wanders.

Vast acres of land prove too much for a stroll, but he does find the dairy, home to a modest-sized herd of amiable cows who plod over to the fence to investigate him. A calf even licks his hand after he rubs its snout. Nearby, there’s a small barn entirely dedicated to the compound’s chickens. All this in addition to the deer, which, he discovers by talking to a petite brunette with the biggest green eyes he’s ever seen, provide supplemental venison over the winter if all the regular wild herds leave the area.

By mid-afternoon, he finds himself in the kitchen helping with dinner preparations. There are heaps of lettuces, corn piled high for the shucking, green beans, carrots, tomatoes... He near weeps when one of the other cooks cuts up and shares a peach, sweet juice dribbling down his wrist.

Minutes before the meal is ready, a lanky, battered, red-kerchief wearing figure enters the mess, preceded by a happy dog with its tail held high. Dorian wipes the tomato seeds from his fingers and goes to greet his two companions.

Cullen takes his offered hand, knitting their fingers, then he blinks, glances around at the steady influx of people into the mess. “I’ve slept all day again, haven’t I.”

“You needed it.”

They sit down to dinner, both of them focused on eating. Partway through, a big bearded fellow with a scarred nose enters with a brute of a dog on his heels. The mutt stares at Buzzard, and Buzzard stares back, but the razor tension slackens with a tentative wag of the tail.  In a series of great puppyish leaps the other dog drops its ears and capers up to Buzzard, transforming from brute to goofy oaf. They sniff and slobber on one another for a few minutes, then settle in to mooch, with varying success.

Everyone seems tired. Some are injured. In spite of that, no one has set a place for fear at these tables. Not even today. Times will change, they inevitably do, but worrying past the present moment, past the heft and press of Cullen by his side and the room’s efforts at upbeat chatter, is pointless. There are fresh vegetables on the table, and they are, all three, alive and together. So, he roots himself, rubs at a spot on Cullen’s cheek where the rumpled sheet has left a mark.

They eat, and then withdraw to their room after politely declining Varric’s invitation to the card table.

Curled together in their bed, in their shared room, they sweat in the early fall heat. It’s wonderful.

Come morning, Dorian goes down the hall to the floor’s bathroom to take a brief, burning hot shower, stealing a few moments to stand in the blissful fall of scalding water. The cut on his cheek stings, but it’s closed up. It’ll scar. Adds character, Felix always said. Afterward, he shaves his beard, all but the mustache and triangle below his bottom lip. With only a moment’s hesitation, he borrows the communal hair clipper from the cabinet and buzzes the sides of his head. Scissors the back of it, though he leaves the length on top, for now.

He visits the mess, greets the few faces he sees there, and makes up two cups from the pot of coffee— _actual fucking coffee_ —on the counter. Milk and sugar, he remembers. As an afterthought, he grabs up a chunk of cornbread from the basket set out alongside the coffee machine. 

In their room, Cullen is still splayed on his back and snoring. Dorian puts the coffees and cornbread on the bedside table and sits down on the edge of the mattress, runs a hand back and forth over the hollow bowl of Cullen’s belly.

“Mm...”

“It’s late, cowboy.” He leans over him to press his face into his chest. “You need some breakfast.” Fingers curl about his nape, and he looks up into Cullen’s face.

Cullen blinks a few times, his left eye almost opening. The swelling has gone down overnight, but it’ll be a few days before it’s back to normal. “You shaved,” he says, a slow grin building on his face.

“Ah, yes.” Dorian lifts his head, turns it side to side. “Now that you’ve seen the rest of my face, what do you think?”

“Looks good.” Cullen’s grin broadens by the moment. “Looks really good.” He takes hold of Dorian’s chin, plants a thumbpad over the soul patch and scruffles it up, and Dorian pulls his head away with a good-natured huff.

Cullen sucks a harsh breath through his nose and squints. “Shit. I shouldn't have slept the night,” he mumbles.

“Hm? Why’s that?”

He rubs at his good eye. “I’m definitely concussed. I smell coffee, of all things.”

Dorian chuckles, pats him softly on the ribs. “There’s a mug for you on the bedside table.”

Shock widening both eyes, even the bad one somewhat, Cullen levers into a sit, easing himself to lean against the wall behind him. “They have coffee?” He begins to reach for it but grunts, the purple and brown bruises on his side stalling him.

In a motion, Dorian hands him his cup. “They do. Not good coffee, mind, don’t get your hopes up. But it _is_ coffee.”

Pausing for a deep inhale of the steam, Cullen holds the mug between both palms. “Damn.” He takes a tentative sip, eyes shut, jaw muscles working as he savors it. “Thought I’d never taste that again...”

He looks haggard as hell, Dorian can’t help but think. Beaten and sallow under the eyes. “I thought I’d never see you again,” he says to him, setting a hand on Cullen’s thigh.

Silent, Cullen pulls another sip, nods a little, then sets it aside. He leans forward and awkwardly loops both arms around Dorian’s waist, careful not to jostle his drink. “You neither,” he murmurs.

Dorian takes a small swallow of coffee. Burnt, and watery, definitely freeze-dried, but palatable thanks to a splash of fresh cream. “For once I’m pleased to find myself mistaken,” he admits, turning to nose Cullen’s hair.

Laughing quietly, Cullen leans up to kiss him, then away again, picking up his own mug. They sit close together, drinking their coffee and nibbling the cornbread, Buzzard begging from his spot at the foot of the mattress. Out the open window gray banks of clouds crowd the western horizon, promising relief from the heat. A cool breeze blows in, ruffling loose threads, the dog’s fur, Cullen’s curls. Dorian’s own hair.

It smells like rain, but it’s not raining yet.


End file.
